


Dulce Periculum

by TerokNor



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Dubious Consent, I don't know, M/M, if only for myself, it is my sworn duty to provide this, no one will read this but i had to do it for me myself and i, there is not enough deathslinger horniness in this world, why the hell am i so horny for this character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 06:40:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 30,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26967640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerokNor/pseuds/TerokNor
Summary: Caleb Quinn grew up with two wicked desires, festering in the badlands of his heart. One he takes to with great zeal. And the other...burns just as fiercely, but not quite so brightly.(I literally am so horny for this character, I cannot cope with the utter lack of content for him, and this is the disgusting result).
Relationships: Caleb Quinn | The Deathslinger/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 57





	1. Press Space to Continue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cowboys are gay. 
> 
> I don't make the rules, I just enforce them.

Some men don’t adapt well to prison life.

That’s what Caleb told the warden.

That’s all he’d said.

His only excuse for pounding Baker’s sorry excuse for a head into the walls of Ward C until his brains gushed out like the pulp of a smashed melon.

The warden wasn’t happy about that.

But Caleb felt no need to explain to him why Baker had no reason to be alive anymore.

And the warden had no need to know anyway.

Perhaps if he’d come up with a phony, half-baked excuse, the warden might’ve gone easy on him.

But it wasn’t likely.

Caleb’s back still ached from the lashings he’d received in punishment.

The blood had finally stopped dripping. 

And yet, incorrigible as a stubborn schoolboy, he bore the pain with no sense of shame.

Now he rested on his thin, narrow prison bed, lying on his stomach, back still on fire.

The warden had enjoyed it.

That Caleb knew with certainty, with a conviction rivaling his faith in the sun rising tomorrow.

It was a private joke between the two of them, really.

The first year he’d been confined to Hellshire Penitentiary, the nation’s first private prison, it had been all smooth talk, special interest in his wellbeing, casual discussions of his father’s work, extra meals, and meaningful glances in the prison yard. On the thirteenth month, the warden had assigned him his own private cell.

Close to his office. More of a refitted closet, really, than a proper cell.

Smaller than his shared cell, but preferable just for the solitude.

But by the fifteenth month, he no longer truly enjoyed that solitude.

Because the special treatment did come with a price.

Not the worst price.

Certainly, one he’d been willing to pay.

But some days, like today, well.

Sometimes he thinks that it might’ve been better to hang for his crimes against Henry Bayshore.

“…Caleb…Caleb Quinn?”

A pale, timid face peered down into his cell from the barred window.

Why was he knocking?

What prison guard knocked before entering a damn cell? They could come and go as they pleased, do anything (and anyone) they pleased.

Caleb said nothing.

And the door opened anyway, as he’d expected.

“I’m…the new surgeon for your ward?” the man said.

Caleb didn’t move.

He closed his eyes, bored by this unimpressive creature, taller than someone as mousy as he looked had any right to be, but otherwise unremarkable.

He stood in the doorway, two guards on either side of him, dressed in white, his thick brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, ugly and twisted up spectacles perched on his long, narrow nose.

“I... was told I’d seen every prisoner of my ward after a morning and afternoon of check-ups, but according to our records, there was someone else…I mean. I saw the name of someone I hadn’t seen, and I had to ask around, and no one knew, except the warden, that you had…special accommodations.”

Caleb wished he’d leave.

Just say what he wants to say, or do whatever he wants to do, and fuck off already.

But the surgeon or whatever just stood there, awkward look on his face.

After a long, painful silence, he finally said: “I’m…called Jensen. I was wondering if I could…do a check-up?”

Caleb shook his head.

The surgeon, Jensen, smiled painfully, well, grimaced really.

“Uh…I’m not…asking, really. It’s mandatory? If you don’t mind?”

Caleb’s tired eyes remain closed.

He just wanted to sleep.

But the surgeon is still there.

And he’s not going to go away.

So Caleb sat up and leaned against the wall, overheated face pressed into the cooler, slightly soothing stone.

His right index finger curled ever so slightly, giving the doctor permission to come closer.

The surgeon’s hands were warm.

And strangely gentle.

They slid around his neck, and Caleb tensed instinctively, involuntarily, but they don’t grip him tightly, to strangle him or hold him in place.

They stroke the soft skin of his throat, right under his chin, firm but gentle fingers leaving dull tingles of sensation in their wake.

When he let go, Caleb had to swallow, feeling peculiar.

He hadn’t been touched like that…ever, really.

His father had certainly never touched him like that.

And the warden…

Next, the surgeon asked him to remove his shirt.

Maybe if he hadn’t had the stuffing whipped out of him, he’d have protested more.

But a man couldn’t rebel every second of every day of the month.

So he did.

And it was another minute or so of…careful touching.

Feeling his chest for…something.

Warm hands feeling him exhaling and inhaling.

Settling over where his heart was.

For a brief second, it beat just a little faster.

And he’d swear, he could feel the surgeon’s heartbeat, pulsing through his fingertips.

But the moment must be all in his damaged head, because it passed too soon.

And the surgeon is reaching for his back now.

Caleb felt him wince as he saw the whip marks, and the accumulated scar tissue.

And was surprised that the surgeon avoided the injuries, not poking or prodding further, cold, clinical as surgeons and doctors and apothecaries often were, but gently, just _barely_ ghosting over his skin.

“You seem…well-fed. More than the others, anyway,” the surgeon murmured. “And…more fit, than expected. Do you…work on the railroads? Or do factory work?”

Caleb shook his head.

“…Neither?”

He nodded.

The surgeon waited, but Caleb was not forthcoming.

“…Well. You’re in good shape. Any complaints? Difficulty breathing? Moving your arms? Difficulty walking? Anything I should know about?”

Caleb shook his head, dark hair falling over his eyes.

The surgeon nodded back.

“…Understood. Thank you, Caleb. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

He is a liar, Caleb thought.

But a polite one, as most liars were.

After he left, Caleb slept.

And when he woke up, he forgot all about his meeting with the surgeon.

At least, until the warden summoned him.

Late, late at night.

Close to midnight.

The surgeon hadn’t left an impression on him, or at least, he didn’t think so.

But when the warden threw a callous arm around his shoulder, his back protested.

His chest felt tight.

Normally when the warden called him into his office, he just thought of…deep blue skies.

Lit with millions of stars.

(As the warden shoved him against his desk, no preamble, no small talk, not a single word in fact).

A sunset on a dusty horizon.

(A rough hand shoving at the hem of his pants, slipping the cheap prison cloth aside, hot and impatient, fingers clawing and bruising not because he needed to, but just for fun, just because he liked marks, just because he liked squeezing and scratching and hurting and prying and hooking and pushing, always pushing, trying to burrow in as deep as he could, because that’s what vermin do, that’s what little rats and gophers and moles do).

The chill of dusk, the crackle of a campfire, the low, mournful caw of lonesome birds.

(He never made noise. He was silent as a chapel. But the warden did. Low, haggard, eager, disgustingly loud and uninhibited, he panted like a dog, and there were other ways he was like a dog, humping anything that stood still, lapping at his ear, biting it sometimes just for fun, slobbering and gnawing on his skin like a starving animal).

Thick underbrush, the cool weight of a shotgun in hand, the comfortable hug of a pistol to his hip.

(Hands on his hips, which ached, which burnt, and his thighs would hurt too, with time, with friction, with constant bumping and grinding).

Shooting Henry Bayshore. The satisfaction of seeing his insides. The way he screamed. The way he dropped to the ground.

(It hurt, it always hurt, especially the beginning, especially the middle, and especially the end. But it was ok. Because he’d been in worse pain before. Because it didn’t matter, because he got more food, more rest, because he was freer than any other prisoner, even if he was imprisoned here, in these torturous moments, which would stay on his mind, morning or night, long after his skin grew cold. Because he’d rather be here with the warden than in some other stinking jail, with other prisoners, with the same intentions, but none of the benefits).

But today, Caleb couldn’t think of any of that.

He thought of his back, first, and how much it hurt.

And how the warden’s slobber was hardly a medicine for the ragged and torn flesh.

And then he thought of what the warden had proposed, the last time they’d done this, a tentative idea, but a solid one nonetheless, one with real potential.

The…after-talks were the real reason he put up with this.

Although, there were times where…it almost felt, but no. No, it didn’t, because Caleb had never really…not with anyone before him.

There had been something there.

A feeling of…longing.

Something that lingered, from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood.

This…feeling close to his heart, back when he had one, that defied everything he’d been taught by his father.

And perhaps the warden had sensed that. Had known about his…immorality.

One that seemed, somehow, more damning than his manic rage, his black, vile need for the tainted flesh and blood of others.

But that hardly mattered right now.

It worked to his advantage, didn’t it?

He and the warden…both had things to gain from this…scenario.

But that was not something he thought of for long either.

A murderer with taboo desires and dark interests, hardly unusual, hardly noteworthy.

No, as the warden gripped his hips, as he buried his loathsome self deep into Caleb’s insides, piercing his core with pain, and even, maybe, just a small shiver of…not-pain, as his fingernails dug into his thighs, his thumbs burrowing into his back, only a little unwelcome, he thought of that strange, plain, unremarkable surgeon.

Why?

He couldn’t say why.

He couldn’t even think of anything in particular about the surgeon. Not his face, his gentle touch, his twisted spectacles, his white clothes. 

All Caleb Quinn knows is that as the warden punishes him, and rewards him, hips slapping against his aching backside, stabbing jolts of pain, and not-pain lighting every muscle with sensations, both dull and brilliant, a feeling he couldn’t quite remember fills the cavity of his being. 

It burned like a disease in his chest, and ravaged the wild lands of his heart.

When the warden was finally done, it was the dead of night.

And he said, he whispered, you know, Caleb, it would be a waste to not explore your other… talents.

It’s almost a joke.

Caleb almost laughed.

But he didn’t.

He just nodded silently, feigning apathy and disinterest, as the warden pushed him away and began talking about…opportunities.

Opportunities for freedom, with a price.

And when the warden began to talk about engineering talents, and bounty hunting, and punishing outlaws, tucking himself back into his pants, and removing his hand from Caleb's lower back, letting him straighten, gain back some dignity, the surgeon faded from his mind.

A different feeling invaded his skull at that moment.

A different desire, not totally separate, but not totally the same either, emerged in its place.

He tasted the sweet taste of bloodlust on his tongue, and felt a burn in his throat as he nodded once, and only once. 

The next morning, he saw the surgeon passing by his cell, heard him call out a greeting, but he ignored him. 

He was thinking too hard about the warden's offer.

And about the people he wanted at his side, when he fulfilled at least one of his two deepest, base desires. 


	2. Play as Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is weird. 
> 
> I'm not good at writing porn, do not judge me.

They were a loud, rowdy bunch.

Fond of swearing, throwing bottles, kicking over tables, wrestling, leering at respectable women, and picking fights with disreputable men.

But Caleb didn’t mind.

Because they were his.

Because they were just like him, in the way that mattered, anyway.

They came and went where they pleased, didn’t concern themselves with propriety, didn’t quell the wild rage animating their souls, but fed the flame with vengeful chaos.

They were as wild as the frontier they’d grown up on, and they accepted the former engineer into their ranks easily, because a human soul at war with itself knows its kin. 

They belonged to him, and he belonged to them.

But Lorcan…was different.

When he joined, it was…ten months into his tenure as the warden’s personal bounty hunter.

He’d sunk into an easy routine.

Go out. Chase bounties. Try to bring them in alive, with limited success.

Return to the penitentiary, with a prisoner or a body in hand.

Receive the warden’s approval. Go back out and try to forget the sound of the warden’s panting in his ear and the oppressive weight of his body that clung to his body even on nights when they couldn’t be further apart.

(“Carrying around that speargun you made, with your father’s tools, in your father’s workshop, running around with that band of lunatics, free to kill and maim as you please, roam the frontier, free as a hawk, no one dares cross you, but they don’t know, or they don’t really understand, why you always come back to me? It’s not so hard, is it?”)

In a shootout with a known train robber and his gang, he’d lost a good man. A loyal young man, only 17, whose face was unrecognizable when they buried him, half of it sprayed out across a bar counter, the other half crumpled in like a kicked crate, the bone completely shattered.

He’d asked the warden for a replacement.

(There are so many quiet places in the Penitentiary. And yet, there are none, because every quiet place is haunted by small sounds, innocuous, filthy, but slapping, squelching, whispering and panting, and even as he wanders free of any chain, he is held back by the feeling of fingers in his hair).

Lorcan was the best candidate.

He’d been bagged for grinding a broken whiskey bottle into the eye of the sheriff of his home town.

Caleb had heard from other prisoners that he had a horrible temper, a filthy mouth, a wicked sense of humor, and a tendency to get in fights.

So naturally, Caleb wanted him for the Hellshire Gang.

And when he joined, he was pleased to find the man was exactly as advertised.

Cursed up a storm, threw his weight around with the other members, started fights with locals, was loose with his gun, quick to draw it, quick to shoot it, had an irascible swagger even when walking into a battle he couldn’t win.

Yet, the worst of his misbehavior occurred when Caleb wasn’t around.

When he was, Lorcan was all crooked smiles and sharp, indecipherable glances over tumblers of whiskey. He liked to push and tease and argue, but he never disobeyed an order.

Caleb remembered a particularly difficult bounty that almost lost them in the Mohave.

The rest of the gang had split up, one quarter racing on to the nearest outpost, to keep an eye out for him, the others splitting off and heading in different directions with a single rendezvous point, to be reached in three days.

It was just him and Lorcan, camping out by the Mohave River. He’d wanted to go alone, but…

“Don’t seem all too smart for a man to go wanderin’ the desert on his lonesome,” Lorcan said in that sleazy, teasing tone of his. “But that ain’t stopped ya’ before, I reckon.”

Caleb stared at him, not rising to his bait, but not totally unamused.

“’Course, even the world’s toughest ol’ coyote can still step in a trap, rattle some poison, find ‘imself in the path of some starvin’ Indians. Might be nice if that grimy ugly son of a bitch had someone ta’ watch over his back.”

The rest of the Hellshire Gang waits for his instructions, curious over how this interaction would go.

But Caleb had made up his mind. He’d made up his mind almost immediately.

He’d simply wanted to watch Lorcan squirm for a bit (although that rat-tailed bastard was smiling, not fazed at all, the little fuck).

He nodded.

And found himself camping alone with his newest recruit.

Not a man of too many words, but enough to keep Caleb’s days lively.

He knew all the constellations in the sky, or so he claimed (to Caleb, most of his names sounded like utter nonsense).

He could rattle off every type of venomous snake that lived in the American Midwest, at least part of which sounded legitimate enough.

He liked to talk about guns and explosives. He was particularly enamored with Caleb’s speargun, asking how it worked, how he’d come up with it.

Caleb didn’t like talking, never really saw the point in it, but it was hard to ignore Lorcan’s enthusiasm.

(And the warden never asked him about his interest in gears, that was for certain).

Three days and nights passed.

Three days of companionable silences, galloping across the desert on horseback, nothing but the sound of wind whistling by their ears and hooves on sand and dirt and grass and the hot sun beating down on their faces and necks and backs. And three nights of alternating between animated discussions about anything in the world Lorcan could think of and quiet interludes where all they did was watch the night sky burn above them.

It was the most peace Caleb had known in years, and he was almost reluctant to meet up with the others.

They caught their bounty.

Dragged him back to Hellshire Penitentiary with a couple new holes.

And the warden welcomed him home, but on all fours, palms raw, knees burning, chest tight, and eyes downcast, he was still in one of the most inhospitable places in America, feeling more at home than he’d ever had anywhere else.

It was hard to avoid Lorcan after that.

“Careful, Cap’ain,” Lorcan had teased, sitting in a dingy saloon twelve miles west of Texarkana. “We keep takin’ private trips like this and the boys’ll start suspectin’ something. Gettin’ right jealous and bitter. Lord knows they bitter ‘nuff.”

So what?

His thoughts show on his face, because Lorcan grinned.

“’Course, maybe ya’ like that. Maybe ya’ want ‘em to know who’s the best in the gang.”

“Best at what?” Caleb whispered.

“It all, ‘course. Shootin,’ killin,’ fightin.’ And other things,” Lorcan said, voice dropping just a little.

Caleb thought he was imagining it.

Had to be.

Because that face was teasing.

He was just yanking Caleb’s chain, the way he always did.

His eyes were narrowing, his smirk inviting, only because it suited him to rankle his boss.

Caleb thought nothing of that comment.

Until they found themselves tracking a band of sheriff killers in Wyoming.

Once again, Caleb and Lorcan were their own team.

The rest of the Gang was situated around the valley, ready to capture or kill any escapees.

Wanted dead or alive, these boys were.

And Caleb felt the haze covering his eyes, felt the itch in his throat, the call of the wild and untamable beast in his veins.

He came down on one of the bounties hard, shooting his spear gun straight through the shoulder and dragging him out of his tent, kicking and screaming and struggling with all of his might to break free.

The man raised a pistol in vain, but he missed.

He missed because Lorcan shot at him with his rifle, blowing off three of his fingers in a shower of blood.

And Caleb dragged the man even closer to him, because he was thick and broad-shouldered and his face was ugly, and he reminded him of someone else he knew, and Dead or Alive pulsed in his chest, and so he took the sharp end of his speargun and jammed it into his throat.

Blood gushed out of him like a geyser.

Caleb hacked at his throat, severing his head from his body, carving savagery into his thick belly and digging into his chest, pulling at his heart with his bare fingers, the rest of the now fleeing group forgotten.

And Lorcan just watched, a glimmer in his eyes.

He was smiling again, licking his lips as Caleb wiped blood off his speargun, his eyes dark and hooded.

And as the rest of the Gang charged forward on horseback, shrieking like wild animals and shooting at the remaining vermin, Caleb’s body was jolted by electricity, a wave of clarity, an uncontrolled wildfire of forbidden desire, so unlike his bloodlust, a feeling he was much more comfortable expressing.

(But to destroy makes one invulnerable. To come in contact with others, and silence them with cruelty, is easy. To navigate the murky and tempestuous waters of the human soul, and its desire for the stormy weather of others, is more treacherous than the frontier itself, or perhaps even the entire world).

After they returned to the nearest town, the Gang celebrated and drank themselves into a frenzy at the saloon.

They stumbled in all different directions, some for the whore houses, others arm in arm and singing as they pranced to the dance halls, and still others to the town center, where they would make fools of themselves all night.

Caleb was a heavy drinker, but even he found himself affected by the euphoria of success.

And Lorcan, an even heavier drinker, stayed by his side the whole night, not talking, for once, but smiling and nodding and vigorously raising his glass whenever someone toasted him for his victory.

And they left together.

And Lorcan had started talking.

About the speargun.

About the way it entered the man’s throat, lopped off his ugly head, rid the world of another poor miserable son of a bitch with no future.

And how he’d never forget it, it would be the greatest memory of his life, and he was proud to be a member of the Hellshire Gang.

And Caleb had thanked him for shooting his fingers clean off, chuckling about how great a shot it was.

And Lorcan had taken the compliment and laughed and said he was due for a raise.

“Admit I’m your best,” Lorcan said. He slung his arm over his shoulder and Caleb let him.

“Best what?”

“Best. Just your best.”

He’d turned to him then, his face warm and flushed and wild with inebriated glee, his eyes brighter than the stars, his chest heaving with excitement, and his beard scratches against Caleb’s beard, tinkling his rough skin.

Caleb stood perfectly still, his heart beating faster than it ever had, even during some of the most exhilarating hunts of his career.

He wanted to pull away, but he couldn’t.

And didn’t want to.

“You’re my best,” he murmured.

And Lorcan had lunged forward and kissed him.

And Caleb didn’t know what to do, he’d never kissed anyone, the warden didn’t kiss, and he panicked, he grabbed at Lorcan’s neck, terrified and not sure what to do, but Lorcan didn’t see that as a threat.

On the contrary, he grabbed at Caleb’s neck too, drunk, clumsy hands clenching tightly at his skin, holding him too tightly, too hard, yet if he even thought of letting go, Caleb thought he might shoot him.

His kiss was sloppy and just a little disgusting, hot and wet and demanding, his tongue inexperienced and slippery, shoving itself at Caleb’s impatiently, but the bounty hunter didn’t care.

He had never felt so at peace with the chaos raging inside of him.

With a fresh kill still on his mind, the memory of the vermin’s blood still staining his hands and pricking at his heart, he returned Lorcan’s fervor with a passion that might’ve terrified him if he’d been sober.

But in that moment, under the stars, under his tent, two base desires could be fulfilled, could be brought into harmony, two demons dancing under cover of night.

And he danced with Lorcan, lying back when prompted, letting his partner in crime kiss him and furiously unbuckle his belt, fingers fumbling in the darkness, hands unsure.

He wasn’t gentle.

And neither was Caleb.

Neither man had it in them to be gentle.

When he fumbled around the tent, looking for Caleb’s petroleum jelly, stashed away with other medical supplies, Caleb jolted in panic, the darkness taunting him, the ground hard beneath his back but not too unlike hard prison stone, the weight on top of him too familiar in its intensity.

But Lorcan bore down on him almost gently, almost fondly, his rough fingers running through Caleb’s hair as though he were a child, pulling at it, almost playing with it. His thighs pinned Caleb down, but his weight was lighter, and more comforting, familiar in a way that lit a fire in his belly.

And Lorcan breathed words of comfort, and encouragement, in Caleb’s ear.

Didn’t sound a thing like dog-like panting, like wheezing.

Caleb laid back, spread his legs, and let him force slick fingers into his entrance, prying none-too-gently at his rim, pushing at his walls the way Lorcan always did, but never so personally before.

He didn’t know what to expect, because he’d done this so many times, yet it never felt like this before.

And he wasn’t sure if he liked this feeling of vulnerability.

He wasn’t sure if he…liked being face to face with the person touching him.

But it didn’t matter.

Because Lorcan and he were alike.

Lorcan wasn’t gentle, he wasn’t kind, and once he knew Caleb wouldn’t resist, he was like a beast hellbent on fulfilling its desires, satisfying only itself.

And Caleb let himself be swept away because the part of him that resented the warden the most, could finally admit that perhaps it wasn’t the coercion or the brutality that he disliked.

But the missing demon behind the savagery.

The evil kindred soul. 

The storm that God sent, to punish his most wicked nonbelievers.

That night, a beast found another beast.

Lorcan pushed into him with his fingers only as much as necessary, loosening him up only just enough to create a space for himself within Caleb.

And when he pushed into the bounty hunter with his cock, Caleb let out a groan, a sound of pain that he had never graced the warden’s ears with.

And Lorcan exhaled into his face, the air hot and moist and foul, and Caleb snarled at him, but he didn’t push him away.

Didn’t try to shrink away as Lorcan fucked into him, carving a path of pain into his backside.

He pushed up against him in rebellion, and it hurt more, and Lorcan snarled back, also in some pain due to his impatience, but they kept moving.

Neither could back down, neither would surrender.

They kept going, hips slamming together in a miserable, ecstatic tango of pain until something popped.

A wheel began to turn, a light bulb switched on, a fire was lit.

Lorcan felt it first, and chased after that feeling. His finger dug into Caleb’s hips and he began to thrust even more vigorously than before, pushing the bounty hunter into the ground with each violent gesture, his back sliding up further and further from the intensity.

And then Caleb felt it.

Something earth shattering.

A spark.

Somewhere, in all of the pain and ache, he began to feel as though he were turned inside out.

And ecstasy coursed through his system as Lorcan’s next brutal shove into his ass jabbed into that spark.

Lit his entire body with a shiver of heat.

And Lorcan kept doing it.

Over and over again, he started to jab into that sweet spot, and Caleb felt a pleasure unlike any pleasure he’d ever experienced before curling his toes, his fingers, shivering through his belly, low and tight and coiled like a rattle snake.

It snapped at his insides with its sweet venomous fangs.

And when Lorcan, in a fit of inspiration, seized his left leg, tense with excitement, and pulled it over his shoulder, bearing down on him heavier and more forceful before, jabbing into him at a powerful new angle, bucking into him like a wild bronco, it finally sunk its teeth into his heart.

Fluid erupted from his own hard cock, staining Lorcan’s shirt, and his entire mind went blank, his whole body went rigid, his existence became nothing but feeling.

And in that moment, he thought, is this what dying feels like?

Ridiculous.

Utterly nonsensical.

But it felt right.

And when Lorcan, grinning in the darkness, yellow teeth flashing, continued to move, chasing his own death, his own release from the mundanity of life, Caleb simply laid back.

And after it was done, after Lorcan rolled off of him, breathing hard as though he’d just run across the entire desert in one day, Caleb fell asleep and dreamt of pulling the warden’s guts out, and Lorcan fucking him into the bloody floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no words.


	3. Bloodweb

Most of them knew, he reckoned.

They always gave him a little side eye when he and Lorcan split off to travel alone, always had knowing glints in their eyes when he ordered Lorcan to stay back during the scouting phase, always left the room quickly if it was otherwise just Lorcan and himself.

He didn’t care too much about what they said about him, just so long as they remembered he was the boss.

Perhaps if Lorcan were…less intimidating, less rambunctious, with steely-eyed impulsiveness and a vicious temper, then maybe their…camaraderie would be more subject to criticism.

But if he were, Caleb doubted this, whatever it was, would work.

Whatever it was…what was it?

Caleb didn’t like to dwell too much on it.

No need for it.

It worked.

It was a relief.

(It was a pleasure).

It was a way to pass the time.

(It’s nice to be alone, but nicer to be alone with someone).

It was something to look forward to.

(Lorcan’s body was so warm, and when he sank into Caleb, it was how he imagined hawks felt, flying close to the sun, or diving into the ground, joyous freedom perched on the edge of destruction).

It was something to remember when he was in the warden’s office.

(Or in the store room, or his cell, or the basement one memorably bad night, when the warden felt like having him somewhere they could be easily caught, his mass just slightly suffocating Caleb for what felt like hours but was probably more like a few minutes).

Lorcan never made him feel humiliated.

He was too rough, too demanding, pushy, domineering.

If he was gentle and treated Caleb like a porcelain doll, the bounty hunter might lash out, bite at his throat, force him to view him as a threat.

To be tender was akin to coddling, to pitying, to humiliating.

Caleb left claw marks on his back, and Lorcan left bite marks on his neck.

(Is he claiming? Or fulfilling some other primal need, a lonely, burning, sadistic urge to bruise, and to twist, and to mangle?)

Their nights were filled with the push and pull of wild creatures, the inevitable draw between equally matched predators, searching for weakness, and finding none, so gleefully diving into an eternal fray, keeping a balance between natural opposing forces.

Lorcan took what he wanted, Caleb took what he wanted.

Both were willing, but neither were willing to back down, and in this way, Caleb’s days became filled with a satisfaction that overlapped with, and even correlated, with the slick pleasurable slide of blood and organs down the end of his spear.

For months, Caleb deliberately stretched out his hunts, letting his prey elude him, taking longer routes, and taking his sweet time returning, if only for an extra night under the stars, just another day, wandering through the wilderness, tracking game with Lorcan, sharing a tent, and fucking whenever and however they felt, with no other interactions with humans whatsoever.

It was an ideal scenario, if not for the minor unpleasantness of nights in the warden’s office.

But they became tolerable nights, when he had days and days and days to look forward to with Lorcan.

For a time, everything was good.

But then, he got sick.

A low buzz began to ring in his ear, and suddenly the sun was too hot on his back, and his vision wavered.

He tried to shake it off, but suddenly his skin was too hot, and his insides were on fire.

He collapsed on the way home, and they took him back to the penitentiary.

For days, his skin burned, his body ached.

He lashed out at anyone who tried to touch him.

They had to tie him down.

(He clawed at their faces, but he didn’t see them. He saw his mother, holding him close, hugging him to her bloody chest, leaking tears of blood, and his father, hanging from a noose, staring down at him with dead, disappointed eyes).

Faces passed over him. Some he recognized, the face of a doctor or two he’d seen before. Some were strangers, nurses and physicians he’d never met.

And most commonly, omnipresent and almost otherworldly, hovering before a halo of blinding light, was the surgeon.

Caleb struggled against them all, but the surgeon made him pause.

Because every time he strained against the belts strapping him to his cot, the surgeon’s hand, gentle and firm, pressed down on his chest.

And he always leaned in close, face concerned, his glasses low on his nose.

Some days, Caleb thought he was ugly as sin, a deformed and crude monster, relentlessly torturing him with his medical equipment, with his lurking, sapping his energy like a creature that fed off of suffering and misery.

Some days, all he could see was an angel, a flickering halo, in robes of white, making the pain go away, a lone beacon in a storm of confusion and fury.

When the fever finally broke, he woke up covering in sweat, soaking straight through his shirt.

He weakly turned his head, fighting back a swell of nausea.

The surgeon is slumped over on his bed.

He looked exhausted, his forehead just a few inches from Caleb’s side, his glasses askew.

For no reason Caleb could figure out later, he reached out with shaking fingers and pulled his glasses gingerly off of his face.

Tucked them into the doctor’s front pocket.

After that, he fell back asleep.

And the next time he awoke, he didn’t see anyone.

He was alone.

And starving.

He wandered out of his cell, thinking about stealing food from the kitchen.

And immediately walked into the warden.

“You look awful,” he said. “Go back to sleep.”

Caleb shook his head.

The warden harumphed and let him go.

It was the dead of night.

The penitentiary was almost never silent, but for some reason, at that hour, it was.

Caleb skulked into the kitchen, looking for meat and bread (and thought about whiskey but felt his stomach probably wouldn’t be too happy with him).

And felt a shiver of unpleasant surprise in his gut at the sight of the surgeon.

He was morosely cutting up a potato, eating salted chunks with blank eyes.

But as soon as he saw Caleb, his entire face lit up.

And the bounty hunter didn’t like that, looking away uncomfortably.

“You’re up! Good to see you, Caleb.”

He put down his plate.

“Anything I can get you?”

Caleb shook his head.

He just wanted him to leave.

He was suddenly very self-conscious of how thin he was, and how weak he felt.

But the doctor didn’t seem to care.

He just smiled at him encouragingly.

And then he insisted on preparing something for Caleb.

The bounty hunter would’ve protested, but his stomach growled, and he felt light-headed.

And the doctor was so…energetic.

He batted away any attempts to assist him, forcing Caleb to sit down rather heavily on a nearby wooden stool.

As he cooked (lamb chops, it smelt like), he chattered.

Something about his mother, living in New England.

And his father, working on the railroads.

Caleb said nothing, but perhaps his brain was permanently damaged by the fever, because he found himself actually listening.

“And my mama, excellent cook, she knew how to do wonders in the kitchen. Wish she were here, she’d make something excellent. But you gotta deal with my weak imitation, unfortunately.”

He smiled then.

Caleb has to blame his illness combined with his extreme hunger for the little jolt he feels in his chest.

“…What about your family? Your mama? Good cook?”

(His mother was a horrible cook. But she smiled a lot. She hugged him a lot. She knew how to fix a broken stove, and how to repair a horse saddle. She could throw horse shoes like a pro, and she and Pa laughed over card games, and he felt safe, raining beating down on their rooftop).

When he didn’t reply, the surgeon just chattered on.

He seemed less…nervous than the last time they spoke.

But Caleb guesses that has to do with the fact that he’d spent the last week viewing him at his lowest, and weakest.

That removed any veneer of intimidation he might’ve had on the doctor.

“My papa hated working on the railroads. He always dreamt of being an explorer. Wanted to see the world, you know? Big place. Gets smaller every day though. Especially with those railroads.”

(Caleb knew railroads. His father had taught him the skills of his trade, but never got to use them in America. He toiled away as a construction worker, his clever and nimble engineering hands worn down to bloody stubs by hard labor.)

“…You know railroads, don’t you?” the surgeon asked.

Caleb startled.

How had he known…?

“I…hear things around the prison. About the kind of work you do for the warden. I know you have a…special tool. It’s a railgun, right? Are you an engineer?”

An engineer!

A long time ago.

Caleb’s face must’ve showed some reaction, because the doctor smiled encouragingly then.

“You _are_ an engineer. That’s great. Where did you learn the trade?”

Caleb didn’t want to answer.

He wanted to eat and go to sleep and recover and go back on the road (and see Lorcan).

But something compelled him to answer.

“My father.”

The surgeon smiled, elated to finally wrangle a proper answer out of him.

“A family trade, then! Did he teach you everything you know? Where did he work?”

Caleb didn’t like where this was going.

He was prying too much; he’d made a mistake.

He got up to leave, but the surgeon dropped what he was doing and ran over to him, blocking the exit.

“Not until you’ve eaten,” he said, puffing his chest out, trying to look intimidating, but failing in every way.

Caleb could easily push him aside.

But he didn’t.

He stared at the man, looking him up and down just to make him squirm, then finally sat down again.

“…Ok. Sensitive topic. I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “We should talk about something else.”

But even though he asked a lot more questions, about engineering, about railroads, about his time in the prison, Caleb didn’t answer a single one.

He ate in silence, and left in silence.

But the surgeon followed him.

“You know, I don’t really know what you do for the warden,” the surgeon said. “You’re obviously an engineer, but he doesn’t talk too much about why you…don’t seem to be at the prison for long periods of time. I assume you’re out…somewhere. Is it nice, being able to travel? Do you meet a lot of people? See a lot of places? I’d love to hear about some of your adventures, I get a little cooped up in here…”

(What he does for the warden? He does many things for the warden. Things he didn’t want to talk about with this nosy son of a bitch).

“…The warden seems like a good man. I’d like to get to know him better. Hard to find good men out on the frontier. Men you can trust. Men you know you can rely on. You don’t go out alone, do you? I think I remember the warden mentioning you had a group, a gang of sorts. What are they like? Do you enjoy their company? Are they all engineers?”

(A low buzz is building up in his temple, threatening to explode. Go away. Go away. Stop talking about the damn warden. Don’t ask about-about the gang).

“It must be nice to work with people you trust. Must be nice to be friends with the warden, and know he trusts you. We’ve talked about you in passing before, and he says he trusts you completely and that he respects you a great deal. And he’s fond of you. Really great things.”

(Really great things, huh, well he has really great things he’d love to do to the warden, for all of the “great things” he’s said, to this stranger, this interloper, this pathetic weasel of a man…)

“I, uh, spoke to the man who brought you in, I think his name was Lorcan? He was worried about you. Is he your, uh, deputy or something? Whenever I had to ask about your daily habits and what kind of plants and animals you came in contact with, they all told me to ask him. I think it’s very important to have a deputy you trust. Lots of things to watch out for, bears, outlaws, Indians. You’ll be glad to know he’s ok, and the rest of the gang will be fine too. Not verry happy to see you so sick, though. Lorcan actually pulled a gun on me, they had to drag him away, throw him in solitary for a little while. But it’s ok, he’s out now, he’s calmed down, and is behaving, so once you make a full recovery-”

(He broke).

Caleb lunged at the doctor.

He slammed him against the wall, his hands around his throat.

The doctor let out a wheeze of terror, but Caleb didn’t let him speak, leaning in close, their brows brushing against each other.

“Do not speak of him,” Caleb growled. “Do not speak of the warden. Do not speak to me. Stay away from me.”

“S-sa…saved…your…life,” the doctor gasped.

“You don’t own it,” Caleb snarled. “You don’t own me. No one owns me. Not you, not the warden, not Lorcan. Nod if you understand.”

The doctor managed a weak nod then.

“S…sorry.”

Caleb let go of him.

He expected the man to turn tail and run.

Maybe even quit, just leave his position, and escape back to his parents in New England.

But the doctor stared at him then, not with fear, but with…interest.

There was still terror, but it was muted.

By curiosity.

Caleb hated that look, especially on the surgeon’s face.

He turned sharply and walked quickly away.

And the surgeon didn’t follow him.


	4. Ready

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm such an idiot.

“I thought you was gonna die.”

Caleb growled into his chest, but Lorcan refused to move.

His body is too hot, had been since he’d walked into his cell and pinned Caleb against the cot, biting more than kissing, leaving trails of fire from his jaw to his throat to his chest. He was heavy and unyielding, not allowing Caleb time or space to protest or do anything but hold on.

“Ass,” Caleb hissed. He surged against Lorcan’s weight, trying to force him to move, hips pushing insistently at his partner’s, but the man forced him down with both hands on his shoulders, his face dark.

He began fucking again, his thrusts short, choppy, tense and angry.

Caleb’s spine was on fire, with pain, with pleasure too.

But he didn’t ask Lorcan to stop.

He bit his throat, sure to leave a mark tomorrow, and squeezed his legs around Lorcan’s waist, ankles locking, and bucked upwards.

When it was over, they ended up on the floor.

Legs tangled together on their sides, chest to chest, Lorcan’s fingernails dug into his back.

He hated being gentle, but he couldn’t stop himself.

Caleb’s hands rubbed soothingly at his back, caressing the ridges of his spine, feeling his scars and his warmth, burying his face into Lorcan’s shoulder, eyes closed.

“You not ‘lowed to die,” Lorcan grumbled. “I’d kill ya,’ Caleb Quinn.”

“As if you could kill me,” Caleb retorted.

“I’d find a way.”

Caleb snickered at that, and he can feel Lorcan’s chest, trembling with gentle chuckles too.

The next day, Lorcan walked out of his cell, and right into Doctor Jensen.

“Ah, sorry,” Jensen said.

Caleb, sitting on his cot, couldn’t see him, but he could see Lorcan.

Staring down rather dismissively at the surgeon, his face unimpressed.

“Uh…what…are you doing here?” Jensen asked a little nervously. “Did, uh, Caleb need something?”

Lorcan’s lips twitched, as if he was seriously considering just shoving the doctor out of the way and leaving.

But Caleb gave him a warning look, and he didn’t do it.

Instead, his lips twisted into a small, goading smirk.

“He did. But I took care of it.”

Jensen spluttered then, and Caleb felt a rush of irritation and even a little embarrassment.

It wasn’t exactly a secret, but the lechery and suggestiveness of his tone was undeniable.

“Well. Glad to hear it,” the doctor squeaked rather awkwardly.

He looked at Caleb strangely after that, but the bounty hunter just stared him down coolly, daring him to ask.

He was looking forward to getting back on the job, but the surgeon didn’t clear him immediately. He had Caleb under “observation” for at least three more days.

In all of that time, Lorcan stalked outside the cell, never too far from him.

Always glowering at Jensen.

Jensen took it in stride, but did seem wary of Lorcan.

“That guy’s…protective, huh?” Jensen asked jokingly, and a little warily, since Lorcan had left briefly, but could come back any time.

Caleb stared up at the ceiling, his face bored.

“I’m glad he’s here, though.”

(That was strange).

“I mean, it must be nice to know someone’s worried about you,” Jensen said.

(Maybe.)

“He’s um…well, doesn’t look like an engineer,” the doctor said.

Caleb almost smiled at that.

(No, he doesn’t.)

On the final day, the warden visited.

He clapped Caleb on the knee and told him he was glad he was better.

“You’ve done well, Caleb,” he said from Caleb’s bedside, perched on a stool. His fingers dug little circles into his knee, idly stroking cursive into his pant leg. “Told the doctor he’d be out of a job if he let you die.”

Caleb didn’t reply.

It wasn’t expected of him.

“You know, we have a good thing going on here, you and I do, don’t we?”

He hummed pleasantly, his thick fingers still idly dancing along Caleb’s knee.

“You’re fulfilling your end of the deal admirably. So much more useful as a bounty hunter than a simple engineer. I knew you had it in you. There was just something in your face. I knew you had the steel, the…hunting spirit. There was a hunger in your eyes that I recognized.”

(Oh. His hand was on his thigh. He was squeezing it hard, his wedding ring shining in the low light.)

“You seem to have taken a liking to Lorcan Kelly. I hear you two are on each other like flies on a wild hog. Some borderline scandalous things, if you know what I mean.”

(His hand keeps moving upward. Caleb tensed instinctively, but knew better than to resist too openly.)

“I don’t much like sharing my toys. But I reckon the right ones might be worth sharing. Just so long as they remember who they belong to, at the end of the day.”

(Just lean against the cold, hard wall and think of something else. Sure, he’s squeezing his cock and balls through his pants, but if he closes his eyes, he can pretend it’s Lorcan. Or not, since he could never pretend the warden’s soft and flabby hands were anything like Lorcan’s strong, hard fingers.)

There was a knock at the door.

Caleb’s eyes opened with surprise and some relief.

But the warden didn’t take his hand away.

And it’s the surgeon.

Who promptly walked in, polite smile on his face.

A smile which immediately faded as he saw the two of them. 

“Can either of us help you, Dr. Jensen?” the warden purred.

The poor doctor looked so flustered, Caleb might’ve pitied him.

If he wasn’t using every fiber of his being to curse him and his entire lineage.

“Uh-uh. No. I heard a noise, and thought…uh. Nothing. I’m sorry.”

The doctor couldn’t be redder if he’d baked for 24 hours under the Mojave sun.

“You can stay if you like.”

And the doctor just said no, and left.

“Why?” Caleb asked dryly.

“Why not?” the warden said with a smile.

He resumed squeezing, and Caleb just sighed and thought about nothing for a while.

He was just eager to get back on the road.

Put all of this behind him.

Forget the doctor existed.

(And the irony is not lost on him, that in order to be with Lorcan, he has to be with the warden in between. That was the plight of all men, though, he imagined. To toil away at the job that keeps food on his table, while finding a reason to live in other pursuits.)

“How many men have ya’ done this with?” Lorcan asked on their first night back on the road. “How many women?”

Caleb grunted dismissively, ignoring his partner and stoking the fire.

He watched the embers glow in the dark night and considered the stars above.

But Lorcan shoved him.

And he fell off the stump he was sitting on.

Caleb cussed him out, kicking dirt at the man.

Lorcan laughed, but his face became deadly serious as Caleb charged at him.

He caught Caleb around the chest, wrestling with him, their dirt clouds almost threatening to smother the fire.

“Don’t tell me I was your first,” Lorcan panted on top of him, his knee wedged in between Caleb’s thighs, digging into his crotch.

“You wish,” Caleb spat.

“Tell me your first.”

“Fuck you.”

“I will. But tell me your first. Ya’ don’t tell me nothin’ about your life, I wanna know this.”

Caleb punched him in the stomach.

Lorcan let out a grunt of pain and let out a yowl like a wild cat as Caleb threw himself upwards and rolled on top.

“You jealous bastard,” the bounty hunter grumbled. “What does it matter?”

“Ya’ didn’t act like it was your first,” Lorcan said. “But ya’ still seemed shocked. Like ya’ hadn’t done it like that before. What gives, cowboy?”

“I fucked every man in Hellshire Penitentiary twice, is that what you want to hear?” Caleb asked.

“Only if it’s true.”

Lorcan’s breath was hot against his face.

He smiled up at Caleb serenely.

A man as rough and wild as him could be docile as a lamb, under the right person.

He reached up with his calloused right hand and cupped his cheek almost tenderly.

“I messed around with a boy I knew in school,” Caleb whispered. His hand was so warm. It felt like one of his wildest and most comforting dreams. “Not the way you and I do. But…other ways. And the warden…”

He didn’t want to say anything more.

Lorcan looked up at him with an indecipherable face. His hands pawed at Caleb’s hips, squeezing them firmly. But he didn’t interrupt.

His eyes expected Caleb to continue.

“…He…and I…more times than I care to count. He was my first…real…but I don’t…”

Lorcan’s right hand came up then, tracing his neck, caressing his cheek, and finally gently covering his mouth.

“Don’t have ta’ say it,” he rasped.

He didn’t explain his sudden altruism.

And he didn’t have to.

Caleb was just glad he was suddenly feeling merciful.

Psychologically, anyway.

Since his hands went from his face to his ass, squeezing and spreading his cheeks through the rough and cheap cloth.

Caleb knew from experience that if he wasn’t fast enough with his clothes, Lorcan might get impatient and simply start tearing.

So he shucked off his pants and undergarments (leaving his shirt on because he didn’t feel like being completely naked without a goddamn tent) in record time.

And, on all fours, on his hands and knees like a dog, he reached behind himself with the petroleum jelly they’d been going through like water in the desert.

Pressing his own fingers inside his entrance, feeling a painful pleasure in doing so, not being particularly gentle with himself.

And Lorcan almost made him jump out of his skin when his arm pressed against his chest.

And gently stroked his cock.

Caleb felt a jolt of unease, his fingers jerking inside of himself, adding another element of displeasure as he remembered the warden’s unpleasant visit to his cell.

And the doctor was the last thing he wanted to be thinking of right now.

But Lorcan didn’t let him think of another man too long.

His beard, thick and masculine and filthy, reminded Caleb that he was neither the warden, nor the doctor, poking and prodding where he didn’t belong. His muscular arms and rough frontier fingers, with thick pads and a distinct lack of elegance, were too radically different from either of them.

For reasons he didn’t understand, he thought of his father in that moment.

Would he be ashamed?

Probably.

Definitely.

But maybe, he’d at least be.... begrudgingly proud of his son.

For…his rebellion.

For…finding his own sort of freedom.

Caleb shoved Lorcan’s hand away from his cock, even though he was all riled up, even though the pressure felt so good, the slick drag of his skin against one of the most sensitive areas of his body was addictive, and the temptation to finish was almost overpowering.

He seized Lorcan’s cock as though pulling a rope to safety, felt Lorcan jolt underneath him as though in pain (probably in pain).

But it was hard, throbbing, at full attention, and Caleb was ready, more than ready, had given himself more preparation than Lorcan normally bothered with.

Lorcan wasn’t normally gentle.

Caleb wasn’t either.

He slid himself down onto Lorcan’s member quickly, faster than he should’ve.

Tears almost welled in his eyes, involuntarily, his hole still just a little too tight, only barely accommodating his partner, his walls squeezing around Lorcan’s cock in a vice grip.

Caleb let out a low moan like a wounded animal.

And Lorcan was gasping for breath, in slight pain himself, but also in a state of almost-pleasure.

They panted in one another’s faces for a brief moment, their bodies touching, but neither moving.

Finally, his heart still hammering in his chest, Caleb began to move.

He found a careful rhythm in his head, ignoring the pain, even ignoring the small sparks of pleasure, more obsessed with moving, gyrating, commanding his body to obey his will.

Feeling Lorcan, but also feeling himself.

His body. His muscles, clenching because he wills it. His hands and feet and hips and legs and even his ass, all moving in perfect tandem with one another.

No one else’s.

Not the warden’s, the doctor’s, or even Lorcan’s.

This was his.

To fuck, kill, and protect.

He was flesh and blood and bone, and it was all his to do with, as he pleased.

When Lorcan couldn’t take it anymore, thrusting up in counterpoint with Caleb bearing down, he almost screamed, in surprise and in physical and emotional satisfaction.

All his, all him, just Caleb Quinn.

Lorcan’s cock prodded at the deepest part of him, the softest, most vulnerable, and sensitive spot of his flawed mortal body.

He let it, he encouraged it, and he let himself drown in the feeling it produced as Lorcan grabbed his ass again and pounded upwards as hard as all one hundred and forty pounds of muscle could manage.

(To be split into pieces, to know destruction, to sink one’s teeth into oblivion for just a moment. Caleb Quinn knew what teetering on the edge of death felt like. And he was addicted to the knowledge of the forbidden, treading where no blessed human could or would, damning himself in exchange for an echelon of understanding that only sinners could bear.)

Just before he came, Lorcan grabbed his cock, and he didn’t think of the warden.

He didn’t think of anyone, not even Lorcan, as he spurted into his fist.

He just felt.

And he felt the gratifying physical and psychological satisfaction of knowing.


	5. The Deathslinger Tips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is late, and not porn-y. 
> 
> But I have noticed I've too heavily weighed this in Lorcan's favor. It's now Jensen's turn, and Jensen is not the hit it and quit it type of guy, so. 
> 
> Slower burn.

_“You can’t be serious.”_

_The warden picked at his lobster with his gleaming silver fork._

_“Someone needs to escort the good doctor Jensen across state lines to the Bedfordshire Penitentiary. Who better than you?” the warden asked with a smile. “They recently had some kind of bizarre infection ravage their facility and the extra help was requested. As long as you don’t touch anyone else, you should be fine. Although, I suppose for you, that might be a challenge.”_

_His smile widened._

_Caleb thought about strangling him with his tie._

_But judging by the sly look on his face, he’d probably just enjoy it._

_“Be gentle with him.”_

_Caleb left then, or else risk throwing the warden out the window and losing his unique sentence._

_In the days leading up the beginning of their journey, Caleb avoided the doctor rather than seek him out to discuss the details._

_Lorcan was rather peeved that he couldn’t go with him on this journey._

_“He’s dead weight,” he complained. “Ya’ need someone ta’ watch your back.”_

_“It’s only for a month or two.”_

_“That’s damn long.”_

_“It ain’t.”_

_“Does that mean I’m leader of the Gang until ya’ get back?”_

_Caleb glared at him._

_“You wouldn’t be leader of the Hellshire Gang if I was dead ten years.”_

_“I’d never let ya’ die before me,” Lorcan murmured then._

_And then he grabbed Caleb by the collar and kissed him hard, and for so long, he almost forgot he had to breathe until he became light-headed._

_Jealous bastard._

The doctor is making these tiny, pathetic little groans.

Caleb wished he would be quiet and let him sleep.

“Caleb! Caleb, I need you to keep your eyes open.”

Annoying bastard.

“Caleb, you’re losing too much blood.”

Was he?

If he was, it’s all that damn doctor’s fault.

He felt like sleeping, so he damn well would.

He closed his eyes.

And sank into blissful darkness.

Only to be jolted back awake.

By a stinging slap of lightning across the face.

“Caleb, I’m ordering you to keep your fucking eyes open.”

Hearing the man swear stung more than the slap.

Just the concept was so strange and alien, that he almost opened his eyes just to see the expression on his face.

But he couldn’t open his eyes.

All he could manage was a small jerk of his head.

_The first day, Jensen managed to fall off his horse._

_He’d gotten on the saddle wrong, and the creature, irritated and high spirited, walked forward, jolting him right over the edge._

_Caleb didn’t laugh, but he did want to._

_Still, to preserve some of the doctor’s dignity, he didn’t let the urge show in his face as he helped the doctor get onto the animal properly, pushing his ass dispassionately up and over the horse’s middle._

_The first night, the doctor couldn’t figure out how to light the fire, and kept insisting on trying, even though Caleb’s stomach was growling, and he just wanted to cook the damn rabbits he’d just shot._

_The first three days of their trip had been, in fact, riddled with many little embarrassments._

_None of which Caleb commented on, but had made poor Jensen flush with a heat that had nothing to do with the perpetual Midwestern sun beating down on their heads._

_But the trip wasn’t painful, at least._

_Sure, the doctor tried to initiate conversation from time to time, but Caleb easily ignored him._

_And after a while, he stopped._

_Things were going pretty well until, well._

_On the fourth day, they stopped by a town._

_More of a mining camp, actually._

_Only a few buildings, a post office, a battered saloon, that doubled as an informal brothel, a barbershop, a sheriff’s office and jail, and a saloon._

_Caleb had made a beeline for the saloon._

_The doctor had gone to speak with the sheriff._

_He hadn’t been planning on drinking too much, needed to be up early the next day, to make the most of the light, and to get this journey over as quickly as possible._

_But his intentions hadn’t mattered much._

_When someone he recognized walked in, two men flanking him._

_Caleb hadn’t moved, not wanting to draw attention to himself._

_But the man who’d walked in had recognized him immediately._

_A rogue former bounty hunter, a sheriff-killer and a known bandit. Traveled with a gang of three to five men._

_Went by the name Old Iron Face, since he was known for killing innocent men and women and even children without a single change in his expression._

_He’d put his hand on his pistol._

_But Caleb was faster._

_His speargun was in his hands before the man could aim his pistol._

_And his spear bolt sunk into his shoulder before he could even fire._

_He’d reeled Old Iron in fast and ruthlessly, dragging him over his table, smacking the man face down before him._

_He’d sunk the sharp end of his rifle into the back of the outlaw’s head before he could even squeal._

_And then he’d yanked it free and ducked as his two cronies fired at him._

_The few other patrons of the saloon had also ducked for cover under the saloon’s battered tables and chairs._

_He’d crouch-walked closer to one of the men, aiming his speargun at his leg._

_It bit into his flesh, and he’d howled, shrieked like a dying animal as Caleb yanked the leg right out from under him, pulling so hard and with such force that he heard, and saw, it snap. Saw the bone splinter and the blood spurt._

_The man shrieked, his face instantly pale, his eyes as round as gold coins, but Caleb didn’t let him suffer for long._

_He’d lunged forward, not even bothering to reload, the spear bolt in his hand, and stabbed the other leg._

_And then he’d stabbed him again, this time in the throat._

_Blood splattered in Caleb’s eye, blinding him._

_And that was when the other man had shot him in the face._

_Or rather, tried to._

_He’d aimed there, but the doctor, who had finished talking with the sheriff, who was supposed to rendezvous with him for a drink, had arrived._

_Just in time to lunge at the man’s arm, disrupting his aim._

_Caleb had known scorching agony as a bullet ripped through his jaw._

_The doctor had thrown himself onto the gun then, forcing it out of the man’s hand._

_But he was distracted, he didn’t see._

_Caleb could see._

_Through his pain, he was still alert, could see another one of Old Iron’s gang, approaching the saloon doors, gun drawn._

_The doctor didn’t have time to react._

_But Caleb did. He had time to straighten._

_He had time to walk forward, just one step._

_And he didn’t know why, but what he did next, he did on pure instinct._

_The crony fired at the doctor’s back._

_But he missed._

_Because Caleb threw him aside, threw him hard, in fact, sent him flying into a nearby table, vaulting right over it and into the lap of the terrified, and bemused, saloon keeper._

_And so the bullet, rather than burying itself into the doctor’s back, sunk its burning hot trail of fire into Caleb’s chest._

“You’re going to make it.”

(Only doctor out here. Gonna die. Gonna die.)

“Goddamn you. Goddamn you, I told you we shouldn’t have split up. You should’ve come with me.”

(Damn you too.)

“You’re losing so much blood. You’re tearing through your stitches. Stop moving. But don’t stop breathing. Don’t you dare stop living. Caleb? Caleb, look at me.”

(Shut up, already.)

“There are people who still need you. It isn’t your time yet. God isn’t done with you.”

(He was done with me a long time ago.)

“I’m not done with you. There are still things you need to do. I know there are.”

(…Bayshore, that son of a bitch. How his rage burned at the mere thought of the man. How he hated, loathed the man who stole his inventions, who didn’t have the decency to die when he was supposed to).

“The warden would miss you.”

Caleb gritted his teeth then, the most movement he could manage.

(How dare he mention the warden.)

(He had no right.)

Caleb’s anger fueled him.

His fingers twitched.

“That’s it. That’s it. Come on back to me. That um…other fellow that you’re…involved with. He’d miss you too.”

(Don’t say his name. Don’t mention him either. You have no right. You have no right.)

To his shock, he felt a hand drop into his.

Jensen was holding his hand.

He was holding his fucking hand, as though he were a child.

No one had held his fucking hand since he was one.

And yet, he was too weak to protest.

(Pretend it’s Lorcan, pretend it’s Lorcan…and yet, Lorcan would never, had never, done this.)

“You’re already bleeding again- someone! I need more bandages or clean rags now! It’ll be ok.”

(He’s touching him. How dare he touch him so gently, so carefully, how dare his fingers drag along his skin, how dare his body ache and groan and burn with pain, and allow this to happen, what is this, why is everything on fire, what is this touch that harms just as it heals?)

_“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god!”_

_He could hear the doctor shouting._

_He could hear him begging for helping, could hear movement around him._

_But mostly, he could hear the doctor’s heart, beating so loud it might burst through his ribcage._

_Beating so warm and fragile and strong and tender as the doctor looked down on him, held him in his arms like a lover._

_He’d been fucked, he’d had passionate and wild sex, he’d laid with the devil, he’d given in to his base desires, he’d bargained with his body, but he’d never been…._

_He’d never been held like this before._

_Held so tightly, with fingers bruising and hard and terrified, as though afraid he would break._

_Hugged close to someone’s chest. One hand on his back, the other clutched around his neck, soaking with fresh blood, his own blood._

_He’d never been looked at this way either._

_With desperation, and not a fear_ of _him, but a fear_ for _him._

_Caleb was bleeding out and dying on the floor of a filthy saloon, so he was feeling a lot of strange and unusual emotions._

_But in that moment, he wondered, in a pain-filled daze, if this is how normal human beings died._

_In the arms of a treasured loved one._

_At the time, he thought he was going to die._

_So he pretended._

_He pretended that Jensen was a lover, and in that warmth, that glow of relief, he let himself drift away._

“Caleb?”

Caleb smiled to himself, his face burning and deformed and rotting from the bullet that had torn through it.

How amusing.

How darkly ironic, that at his ugliest, near death, decaying, and hideously distorted, he was in the arms of someone who looked, acted, and sounded like an angel?

Perhaps an angel of death, but an angel nonetheless.

His face was wet.

The surgeon was crying. Tears of sadness, relief, frustration? 

He was crying, and for a moment, Caleb thought he was weak. 

But the moment passed.

And instead, for some reason, he suddenly thought that perhaps Jensen was stronger than he looked. 


	6. Obsession

_His face burned as though someone were scraping it off, piece by piece._

_Someone was jabbing at it with hard fingers._

_He snarled instinctively, like a wild dog, but was rewarded with a shock of pain, paralyzing the entire right side of his face._

_He thrashed like a fox in a snare, but there were hands all over him, hard and rough, flabby and soft, gentle and firm._

_“You’re hurt,” the warden purred. “Don’t move.”_

_Covered in sand._

_Ravens pecking at his eye socket._

_“Jumping in front of a bullet,” Lorcan growled. “You mad man. You fool. Do you think of yourself as a hero?”_

_“The stiches are holding you together,” Jensen whispered. “You’ll be ok. Thank you. Caleb. Thank you.”_

_Shadows swirl overhead._

_Someone beckons to him from an open doorway in the sky._

_Caleb turned his head away, towards the ground instead._

Dark wooden paneling.

Rain leaked through a crack, a drop falling on his nose.

Caleb Quinn, still alive and kicking, blinked, one eye covered and sightless, the other eye dull, unfocused.

His head lolled to the side, face aching at the slightest movement.

Jensen was on the floor.

He appeared to have fallen out of the chair pushed up against his bed.

And Caleb was lying in a bed, a rickety little wooden thing, the sheets coarse and rough and irritating against his skin.

There were other beds, lined up next to his. But besides the doctor, he was the only other occupant of the room.

His chest was burning.

It ached as though he were in the process of dying, but a second time, having recovered from one attempt only to begin again, before the first one was properly finished.

And his face.

God, he was already an ugly son of a bitch.

Now his jaw felt dislocated. It felt like it wasn’t quite hanging properly anymore, like it had been ripped off and jammed back shut by a small and irresponsible child.

Even grimacing hurt, the muscles of the damaged side of his face screaming with every motion.

He wished he was sleeping.

Or dead.

Either scenario would be better than being awake, like this.

Instinctively, without thinking, he opened his mouth to call out to Jensen. Or rather, his jaw twitched, as though pantomiming the action he was attempting rather than fulfilling the act itself.

And he was immediately beset by a sensation like red hot needles being jabbed into his jaw, into his ruined cheek, the skin splitting and tearing and bleeding.

He groaned, low and long, more of a rumble of discontent than anything else, and although he was quiet, somehow, Jensen heard it.

He stirred on the floor, the lines of the floorboards carved into his face.

His eyes lit up at the sight of Caleb.

In his pain, the bounty hunter just felt irritation at the almost puppyish look of relief on his tired, yet hopeful face.

“You’re awake,” he croaked. “Oh, thank the almighty.”

Caleb said nothing.

This time out of necessity, because he was sure his face would feel like it was splitting apart.

Jensen saw the blood soaking through the bandages of his cheek.

He rushed to Caleb’s other bedside, retrieving bandages from the drawers of the nightstand.

Caleb winced as he changed the dressings, wanting to pull away, but feeling a great exhaustion grabbing his core, weighing down his every limb.

“Don’t talk,” Jensen said.

Then he seemed to realize the irony in that statement, and he cracked a weary grin.

“You’ll be fine, Caleb. I know it hurts a lot right now, but…I think you’ll be ok. And you can trust me. I am a doctor, after all.”

Caleb felt his jaw ache in protest as something like amusement almost curled his cracked lips into a smile.

He didn’t feel like smiling for the next agonizing four days.

He was starving, but couldn’t eat.

He was thirsty, but water leaked through his cheek, stabbing at the insides of his face, sloshing around the irritated ragged flesh.

And that was just his face.

His chest felt like it was being hollowed out from the inside by tiny vengeful elves.

There were days he just wished he’d died in his sleep and could rest eternally in hell.

Even in his dreams, he couldn’t escape the pain, being tortured by different people, sometimes the warden, sometimes his enemies, Old Iron Face in particular, the back of his head caved in and sliced to bits, but his eyes still more alive than ever, sheriff killers and bandits, train robbers and serial murderers, and very, very rarely Lorcan, who looked down on him with disapproval, and jealousy, his face steely and cold.

And once or twice, he saw Jensen on the other end of a sharp scalpel.

Carving into his chest for a bullet that didn’t exist, smiling angelically even as he pulled Caleb’s flesh and organs apart, searching for a heart that didn’t exist.

In the end, he had to conclude that being awake, although more painful, was preferable.

The Jensen of the real world was also preferable to the ghoulish phantasms of his dreams.

He talked incessantly.

But in his discomfort, Caleb actually preferred hearing him ramble now, where before he wanted to stuff his ears with wax.

He was a low, persistent hum in the explosive minefield of painful sensation that was Caleb’s waking moments.

And it was strange.

Although the warden certainly shared Caleb’s well-read background, he hardly felt close to the man.

It was nice speaking with someone as educated as the warden, but without the added con of constant double entendres and sly derogatory comments.

“Are you in pain? Is there anything I can do for you?” Jensen always asked whenever Caleb woke up, or whenever he walked back into the room to see he was awake.

Caleb didn’t reply initially.

But maybe it was the extended suffering, maybe it was the fact that the doctor was seeing him at his lowest and weakest.

Because one morning, he woke up and realized that one of his walls had crumbled to pieces.

The doctor asked him what he could do for him.

And Caleb replied, quietly but just audibly, “Tell me a story.”

He closed his eyes, because he didn’t want to see the expression on Jensen’s face.

But he could hear something in his voice as he replied, a timid, but eager energy.

(And that was just as bad as seeing the look on the hapless young doctor’s face).

“When I was just a little boy, my uncle taught me how to swim. We were supposed to go on a fishing trip, and my mother insisted that I learn the basics of swimming before I step one foot into a boat. He taught me the same way our grandaddy taught him. Threw me in face first. He let me flail around a bit, screaming and crying and getting water in my nose, and then grabbed me around the middle and hauled me up. The water was warm, and it wasn’t too deep, but I was terrified. Have you ever touched the bottom of a lake with your toes? It’s all slimy and gross. I was scared something was going to grab me. But my uncle was so excited to teach me and after a while, I started to understand what I needed to do. And I really began to enjoy swimming. And it was beautiful out there. The sun. All the trees. The sandy shores and the rich soil and the beautiful mountains and the curve of the land. And the wildlife! The eagles and the hawks and the frogs and the deer and squirrels. I didn’t catch much on the actual fishing trip, but…it was nice to see…my home. Just laid out in front of me, prettier than a painting. Beautiful country, America is.”

(Beautiful? Maybe parts of it. But Caleb couldn’t help but feebly pat his own chest, feeling the bump of the bandages, and think bitterly about how ugly it could be too).

Almost as though reading his thoughts, the doctor smiled rather sadly then.

“Men like you know both the beautiful and the ugly,” he said. “But you do love it, don’t you? There’s…something alluring about it all, isn’t there?”

(Alluring? The wilderness? The untamable night sky, the chaos of desolate freedom, the wicked wasteland of amorality and the unfettering of one’s godforsaken soul? He was born in this wilderness, raised in it, and knew better than anyone where the line was crossed between man and animal. And he walked the fine edges.)

“…Caleb. I haven’t had the chance to tell you this. But. I want to tell you it now, because…I don’t know,” the doctor said awkwardly. “Thank you. I can’t thank you enough. You saved me, you took a fatal shot to the chest for me, you-you threw yourself in front of me, and I-”

Caleb reached out with his fist and bumped it against the doctor’s chest, stopping him abruptly.

“Don’t,” Caleb said. “It was my job.”

He didn’t like the look on Jensen’s face.

He was…smiling. But differently than before.

Caleb felt an uncomfortable twinge in his chest that didn’t seem too related to the aches and pains of the gunshot wound currently dug inside of it.

“A job’s a job,” the doctor said. “A man’s life will always be more important than just some…job.”

“Don’t read too much into it,” Caleb said gruffly. “I take my work very seriously.”

“Is that what I am? Work?” the doctor asked, just the slightest hint of a teasing tone in his voice.

“Yes,” Caleb said stubbornly, almost childishly affronted by his sudden change in attitude. “A real piece of work.”

“Well, you’re not exactly a walk through the valley of sunshine and rainbows,” Jensen said with a snort. “But I often find the rugged path is more interesting than the straight and narrow.”

He patted Caleb’s knee, so quickly and casually that he didn’t even have time to be offended.

“Holler if you need anything,” he said. “I’m gonna slip into one of the beds over there.”

And to Caleb’s surprise, he stripped down in front of him, pulling off his coat and trousers and shirt, swapping to a thinner and lighter set of overwashed pajamas.

And he was out like a light, sleeping so soundly that Caleb could only wonder what it was like to feel so safe in a world determined to batter you into pieces.

But something about the doctor’s nonchalance, his ease, his utter lack of paranoia, and casual nature, must’ve been infectious.

Because that night, Caleb found himself sleeping easier than he ever had before.

And although he still ached, and his skin still chafed, and his organs still felt like a child had battered them around like play toys, he found the doctor to be an…adequate distraction.

He loved to tell stories.

Stories about his mother and father, of New England, of places in Europe that Caleb had only ever seen on a map, of patients he had treated, the kinds of wounds he’d see, the kinds of stories people had to tell.

Sometimes they were short little stories, a babble about the new fashion preferences of the native women of India.

And sometimes they were long, and fantastical, a long, epic adventure that had been told to Jensen by a stalwart sailor who’d been fought off a crew of pirates and sailed across the seven seas.

Sometimes he told of urban myths and legends, strange creatures that roamed the American Midwest on full moon nights.

Other times, he told stories that he made up, stories about beautiful princesses and handsome princes, evil demons and spirits, wise old women and dastardly witches, clever animals and cunning lords, great and benevolent kings and their prosperous reign from ancient crumbling castles in far off lands.

(Just to pass the time).

“The man loved his wife so much, he swore he’d bring her the sun and the stars and the moon if it would make her happy. But all she wanted was to hold onto the tail of a comet, and fly into the heavens with him. Their journey would burn an eternal constellation into the realm of gods, and their love would be etched into the sky forever.”

(Just because he needed the distraction).

“And so the shapeshifter donned his human form, destined to never return to his kingdom in the enchanted woods, yet unafraid, unrepentant, choosing the savage and mysterious beast of love over what he had known his entire life, choosing an adventure with his soul’s mate, rather than lose himself in the starless night that would be his life without her.”

(How he grew found of the doctor’s breathlessness, the way he sometimes tripped over his words, getting so excited he found himself skipping too far ahead, or missing information, laughing as he re-traced his steps, and began again.)

“What if humans could fly, soaring with wings like a hawk, or an eagle, and see what a star is made of, if it’s warm or cold, if it’s a ball of heat or a chunk of ice? If we could just keep going and going and going and see what’s out there, if there are other…worlds like ours, but different? Sounds stupid, but…could you imagine?”

(How Caleb began to look forward to hearing, and almost seeing, the doctor weave intricate tapestries of human, and non-human, life incomprehensible to the world he’d thought he knew, the details so colorful and animated they seem to come to life in their dull little room, stretching the dusty and blood-stained little patch of the world they knew into a wondrous realm of possibilities and dreams and distant futures, contorted by chance. How small the world had felt before, and how endless the worlds inside Jensen’s head felt).

What had originally just been a dull hum became a rhythmic melody.

(A song he couldn’t get out of his head, but one he didn’t want to leave, one that not only warded off the oppressive silence of his inner demons, but held him upright, carried him from dream to dream, tiptoeing around nightmares and skipping around dangerous patches of solemn realities).

Weeks passed, and he started to realize he wasn’t in pain anymore, that he didn’t need to listen to the doctor anymore, could stand up, walk around, find other forms of entertainment.

(And yet, he didn’t.)

Their journey could continue.

Their provisions were packed. Their horses were ready to go again.

Jensen had asked him if he felt he was ready.

(He said yes, because he was. But inside, his chest ached with phantom pain, his throat felt dry, his reckless confidence abandoned by the realization of his mortality. And his face, his ugly, broken face. It burned.)

They got back onto the road, after eight weeks of recovery.

Caleb said nothing their first day back on the trail.

But that night, he said, without looking directly at him, “Tell me a story.”

And out in the middle of nowhere, just two specks of dust, under an endless celestial horizon and the shadow of night, Jensen spun walls around their camp, towers out of thin air, monsters out of clouds, beautiful people out of the sky, to love and fight and live and breathe, as though they were as real as the two of them.

Caleb saw them as he watched the embers from their fire rise, and as he closed his eyes, Jensen still whispering, just for the two of them, his voice beginning to tire, but his spirit still going strong, they carried him into his dreams, where he forgot who he was, where he was, the bitterness and suffering of his past, and all of the weight he’d been carrying on his back since he was thirteen.

(I thought I knew what freedom was. I now know…there is more than one way to enslave a man, and more than one way to set him free).


	7. Defend Your Territory

_He’s swimming through a bottomless lake, yet he doesn’t feel a lick of fear._

_The water was dark, its depths indiscernible, unknowable, yet his strokes were powerful, confident, never hesitating._

_Something stirred beneath him, something massive, ancient, its claw-like hooks spiraling from the center of the lake like the legs of a spider, but he ignored it._

_Someone was waving at him from the shore._

_He swam towards them eagerly, not knowing who they were, but knowing in his heart that all he wanted was to be by this person’s side._

_But the lake pulled him back._

_It began to drag him to its depths, and he realized with a jolt that it was no lake at all, but the night sky, murky and mysterious, stars glowing all around him, caught in the pool just as he was._

_His head went under._

“Are you awake?”

Caleb didn’t reply, still caught up in the strange atmosphere of his dream.

The doctor was moving slowly.

He was exhausted.

He had been since the first day they arrived at the Bedfordshire Penitentiary.

Caleb had spilled a man’s insides out, had blown off chunks of men’s skulls, carved through human organs; he was no stranger to death.

But even he felt a little nauseous, a little queasy around the stench of disease.

Hollow-eyed men with paper thin skin, the acrid scent of vomit dripping from their mouths when they groaned, the near-constant heat emanating from every pore, the way they coughed.

Caleb might be a cruel man, but at least death at his hands was swift, and usually so instant it was painless.

These men and women…simply fell apart.

Once they had arrived, Caleb wasn’t really required to do anything else.

He was simply an escort.

But he found it difficult (and boring) to simply stand around while the doctor was so busy.

He was a body guard at first.

Simply following the doctor around, helping him with his equipment, menacing any prisoners who looked like they might be trouble, whether they were so fever-mad they needed to be restrained, or were the opposite, healthier, but looking to cause trouble.

Then he saw how Jensen spoke to each and every one of his patients.

How he didn’t shrink away from their disease-ridden hands, but reached towards them.

How they begged him for help, and he gladly gave it to them, gave them his all.

How he worked himself nonstop, trying to make the weak strong again.

It was strange to watch.

Part of Caleb wanted to be sickened by his magnanimity, his reckless and foolish compassion.

But it was hard once he decided to follow the doctor around, because there was a layer of steel beneath the Jensen’s warm continuance. There was a hidden strength to his kindness, a gentle, but firm bite to his insistence on prescribing medicines and other physical treatments.

It was hard not to admire it.

And even though he wasn’t the type to help others, especially those who would never have helped him, if their situations were reversed, something inside him was still capable of pity.

Of…gratification when someone thanked him for a cold rag, for a glass of water, their eyes weak, but burning with the intensity of fever and misery.

One particularly long day, full of running from one end of the prison to the other and retrieving blankets and medical supplies and water and food, one man, lying in his cell, had asked him what happened to his face.

And Caleb, tired and irritable, thought for a second that he was mocking him.

And rage burned in his throat.

But before he could unleash it, he caught a glimpse of the doctor.

Scurrying past the cell busily, carrying several crates full of god knows what.

And the rage died as though smothered by a bucket of ice cold water.

And he recalled how weak he felt, how pitiful he must’ve looked, how pathetic and low he felt while injured and sick.

And how Jensen hadn’t looked at him any differently.

“…I got shot in the face,” Caleb said.

“…Too handsome before, eh?” the man asked weakly, his chuckles evolving into ragged coughs.

Caleb stared at him impassively, not sure how to respond.

“Am I going to die?” the man asked.

He looked as though he were already dead, or as close to it as someone could get.

So Caleb answered honestly.

“Maybe.”

“…Did _you_ almost die?”

Caleb nodded.

“…Who saved you?”

The bounty hunter blinked.

“The same doctor who might save you.”

The man nodded, seeming as content as he could be for someone in his position.

Caleb wasn’t sure why, but something about that interaction stuck with him.

And after that, he began taking an even more active role, helping the doctor with anything he needed, anything he asked for.

He became so entrenched in assisting Jensen, that the man expressed concern over his condition, asking him if his face was healing properly, if his chest was giving him trouble.

But even on the days when blood leaked through his shirt, overexertion agitating the still healing wound, he kept his mouth shut, insisting on helping Jensen anyway.

It was a bizarre feeling.

Not just the…saving people versus killing them, like he usually did.

But…helping.

Being beside someone who helped others. Being around someone who was capable of giving, not simply taking, who had an infectious energy, a simple yet powerful desire to care for others. Being near someone who felt like a breath of fresh air, who made the very atmosphere of any room feel lighter, more cheerful.

Being with someone who made the world feel as though there was some kind of meaning, in all of its chaos.

For the four weeks they spent at Bedfordshire, gradually improving the health of its prisoners, Caleb and Jensen actually didn’t talk too much.

Too much to do. They spoke in quick bursts, usually just business, and there were times when they simply ghosted right by each other, their schedules starting to diverge as other doctors and assistants began requesting Caleb’s assistance in other places.

But when the time came to leave, they ate dinner together, alone, for the first and only time they had during their entire stay.

Jensen looked tired.

But he still smiled weakly at Caleb, his hand trembling around his fork.

“Are you ready to go home?”

(Home?)

“…I’m not…too excited, but it’ll be nice to rest a little. Don’t have anyone to welcome me home but my bed.”

(Lorcan. He hadn’t thought about Lorcan in a while. Had he thought of Caleb at all? Was he lonely at night, at Hellshire Penitentiary, when he thought of the nights he stole into his cell, was always there if he needed him?)

“…Um. I know it’s none of my business. But…must be nice. Going home for you, I mean. You…must miss your gang. Or at least….some of them.”

(Lorcan. Is he talking about Lorcan? Is he judging him? Trying to relate to him?)

“…I…must say, other than almost letting you die, it’s been…a…pleasant journey. I enjoyed seeing our pocket of the world. I don’t get the opportunity to travel much, and at first, I was a little…worried. But you’ve done your job well. I felt…safe. With you.”

(Him? Keeping someone safe? He wanted to laugh at the idea, but something in him doesn’t find it funny, some part of him feels uncomfortably warm, a disagreeable heat associated with embarrassment. He was unworthy of such praise, yet coming from him, the doctor, Jensen, it aroused another discomfort entirely, one that was new to him). 

“That man who was always waiting outside your cell, when you were sick…what’s his name?”

“…Lorcan.”

(Why did he answer? Why did it feel so natural to answer him now, where before silence was his instinct?)

“…That’s a nice name. Is he…a close friend?”

(…Is he jealous?)

“…He’s my partner.”

“Oh…that’s lovely. It’ll be nice to see him again, won’t it?”

“…”

(…What are you trying to say?)

“…Does, um…does the warden…? Does he…mind?” the doctor asked timidly.

(Oh.)

(How could he have forgotten?)

“He minds his business,” Caleb said, perhaps harsher than he meant to say it.

“Ah,” the doctor squeaked.

(Such an uncomfortable pause).

(When did these pauses begin to feel uncomfortable?)

“Sorry. I just…had this idea about you. But then I got to know you more…kind of. And you don’t seem like…the type to…uh. I misread you. I’m sorry about that too.”

(Misread? What exactly is he getting at?)

(Is he calling him a…?)

“And I wasn’t judging you or anything,” the doctor said hurriedly. “You’re too scary of a guy to judge.”

Caleb laughed.

Surprising himself, and Jensen, who actually dropped his fork in surprise.

He smiled crookedly.

(…What is this? This feeling as though he’d just fallen from a great height?)

“You’re interesting, you know that? Terrifying, but…there’s more to you than…that tough exterior, isn’t there?”

(Interesting?)

“…You’re different than I thought too,” Caleb murmured.

The doctor positively beamed.

“And…”

(Don’t say it, don’t say it, don’t say it-)

(Fuck it).

“The warden and I are just fucking,” he said. “Nothing more.”

The doctor’s face went beet-red.

He looked down at the table, flustered.

Caleb thought he’d feel some kind of shame admitting it out loud.

But instead, he just felt a strange sense of…relief.

As though it had been buried down deep inside of him for too long, hadn’t been aired out in so long that it simply sat in his chest, building up decay and rot until it poisoned him from the inside out.

“…I…two men…I mean I’ve…heard things…about…sailors,” Jensen forced out, his eyes shiftless and nervous, unable to meet Caleb’s.

Caleb almost chuckled.

He turned it into a nonchalant cough instead.

“There ain’t rules in the Wild West,” Caleb said. “All you got is your gut. And that’s what my gut’s told me, ever since I was a boy.”

(Too personal, too exposed, but he’d seen everything, hadn’t he? Seen him at his best, seen him at his worst. Knew his dark little secret-not-secret. Saw him at his most alive, and at his most dead.)

“Doesn’t he…get jealous? He seemed like the jealous type.”

(You’re not wrong.)

“Neither of us really have a say in the matter.”

(When you belong to someone, body and soul, but not to heart).

“Oh…oh, I see…”

(Is that pity?)

“I’m no helpless victim.”

“I never thought so. Just…”

“Do you know why I was sentenced to Hellshire?”

(Killed a man in cold blood, only he didn’t have the decency to die.)

“I’m not helpless. I did what came naturally to me. You know now that I’m no simple engineer.”

(Not really. Not anymore.)

“Caleb, it sounds like you’re trying to convince yourself of something, not me,” the doctor said gently.

(Fucking ass.)

Caleb said nothing, but something like embarrassment was burning color into his cheeks, uncharacteristically drawing a reaction out of him that he loathed to show the man.

So instead, he resorted to sullen silence.

But Jensen refused to let him stew for long.

(Because a switch had been flipped, because he knew too much, he knew everything, because Caleb had told him, and why had he told him, why, but also, why wouldn’t he tell him, when he has no one else to tell, no one else to fairly judge and dissect him into manageable pieces?)

“You might’ve accepted what you feel you have to do, but it doesn’t make it right,” the doctor whispered. “You’re allowed to hate. Sometimes. You’re allowed to love. Always.”

(Haunting words. He’d hear them in his nightmares, in his dreams, in his waking moments, every time he stopped to get the doctor untangled from his saddle or helped him set up a tent or even just ran into him at Hellshire. Nightmarish, dreamlike words. What could they mean, aside from the obvious? Too much for his still injured chest to bear.)

The next day, they were back on the road.

Jensen told epic love stories, full of passion and betrayal and yearning.

Caleb said nothing, but listened.

And the night before they were due to arrive back at Hellshire, camping out near the closest city to the Penitentiary, for their first and only time, they drank together.

And Jensen was a sloppy drunk, talkative and high-pitched, sensitive and high-strung.

He didn’t hold his alcohol well, and flopped down beside Caleb, daring in his intoxication, his head falling into his lap.

And Caleb, rather drunk himself (but not quite as much), had simply brushed his fingers through his hair.

Before shoving the chuckling man off of him.

But when he woke up, flat on his back as though he’d been knocked out and left on the floor after a tavern brawl, Jensen’s hair tickled his nose, his face buried in his neck, his breath warm against his collar.

Before the doctor could wake up, he’d quickly, sloppily, recklessly kissed his forehead, for no reason he could think of, except maybe just to pretend.

Pretend for a moment, that they were in one of Jensen’s little stories.

And that they could ever be something greater than their mundane little worldly selves.

For a moment, he pretended that he, Caleb Quinn, was not simply an ordinary human being with a shattered face and a nasty temper, who used and was used by others, but the hero of a story still being written.

If the warden was the ugly truth, and Lorcan was the bargain with reality, then Dr. Jensen must be the fantastic illusion.

Still.

(Life could be worse.)

(At least you’re alive.)

(At least, you know what some kind of love feels like, and isn’t love the most reckless and ridiculous illusion of them all?)

(An illusion of freedom, an illusion of happiness, an illusion of immortality, and commitment, in a world where nothing is certain, where we all teeter on the precipice of death, and feel its cold sting against our throats even as we promise to love and to hold, forever?)

(There is no forever, Caleb Quinn.)

(…Not yet, anyway.)


	8. Gearhead

Caleb didn’t concern himself with appearances.

Least of all his own.

(He was composed of so much more than the flesh that his spirit inhabited).

But there were some very positive new reactions to his new face.

For example, the warden was far less interested in “seeing” him.

(And it helped that, in Caleb’s absence, his wife had died in child birth, and he was now looking for a replacement, a young woman capable of raising the new baby as well as the first one. Not only was he less interested in Caleb, but the prison overall, taking extended leaves from Hellshire.)

And people flinched when they saw him now.

They couldn’t make eye contact for longer than a few seconds, shuddered when his eyes were on them, outright hunched over whenever his gaze imperiously swept over them.

It gave him an immense satisfaction, the almost tangible sense of power that his new face granted him, the new aura of menace, the appearance of a grizzled survivor that dissuaded good, sensible people from trying to speak with him, instead shuffling away quickly and grasping their children’s hands tighter.

But there was one person it seemed to have the opposite effect on.

The very first night he returned to Hellshire, Lorcan visited him almost immediately, not even letting him sit down on his beaten-up cot, shoving the door open so violently, it banged against the wall with a thunderous boom.

He didn’t even close the door before he was on Caleb, pressing their lips together so hard that the gang leader actually closed his eyes in surprise, the lanky, slightly taller man push him to his cot with a loud accompanying screech of protesting metal. 

“Looking for something?” Caleb growled as Lorcan nipped at his neck, biting a stinging trail of bruises up and down his throat as he yanked at his belt buckle.

“Ya’ve gotta lot of fuckin’ nerve crawlin’ yer skinny ass back here with a face like that,” Lorcan said, hissing as Caleb’s fingers rub his cock through his pants. “The fuck happened?”

“Got shot in the fuckin’ face,” Caleb grumbled. “Fuck!”

Lorcan was going to tear his shirt if he kept yanking like that.

Caleb sat up, shoving at his partner’s chest impatiently, trying to give himself space to pull his shirt over his head.

As soon as he did, Lorcan stopped and stared.

And Caleb realized that he was staring at the scars.

The new one, the rippled skin where a bullet had torn through his skin, and grazed some vital organs. 

And for the first time since he’d recovered from his mortal injury, he felt insecure, doubt and trepidation clouding his mind.

(Is he…is he disgusted? Does he hate me now? Fuck, why isn’t he saying anything?)

He covered the scar with his hands instinctively, looking irritably, almost accusatorily at Lorcan as he did.

They glared at one another for a few seconds, Caleb feeling unfairly exposed with Lorcan totally clothed, and Lorcan scowling, his face dark and ugly, his eyes narrowed with fury.

“Fucking jackass,” Lorcan snarled.

“What did I do?” Caleb spat back, defensive in his vulnerability, his cheek twinging with phantom pain.

“Ya’ needed me there, but didn’t let me come,” his partner snapped. “Ya’ fuckin’ dick. Ya’ stupid fuck.”

He bent down over Caleb on all fours, ripping open the buttons of his pants.

But to his shock, instead of going right for his ass, and twisting open the jar of petroleum jelly they stored under his bed, off in the far-left corner, Lorcan stopped further north, his face hovering over Caleb’s cock.

“What are you waiting for?” Caleb asked, irritable in his discomfort and confusion. “Get on with it.”

Lorcan smiled devilishly, just predatory enough for Caleb to prop himself up to protest against whatever he’s about to do.

But he was met by a rough shove to his chest, forcing him back, Lorcan’s palm pressing down over his rapidly beating heart.

And the next thing he knew, Lorcan’s tongue is dragging alongside his length, slick and slow, circling around the head, his eyes glinting mischievously, never leaving his face.

Caleb let his head fall back, all of his defenses in pieces, his soul laid bare before the conquering hero.

“I missed you,” he whispered.

Lorcan slipped his stiff erection fully into his mouth and smiled, grinned at him like a naughty schoolboy getting away with a prank, and it was so filthy, so obscene, and even ridiculous, that Caleb grabbed a fistful of his hair and pushed his head down to hide his face, relishing in the filthy wetness of his mouth around his dick, fire pooling in his groin, liquid ecstasy coursing through his veins.

His chest bent over his partner’s head in a sick sexual mockery of a mother hugging a small child close to her breast. He laughed at the thought of it, his fingers tightly interwoven in his hair, massaging the back of his head.

He leaned in close, as close as he could, his heart beating so loud he knew Lorcan could hear it, could probably feel it, hammering above him, and he sighed.

And breathed in his smell.

The smell of home.

(But why, why later, when everything was left unsaid, when Lorcan fell asleep, exhausted, against his chest, did it feel as though his chest was still hollow, like home didn’t quite feel the same anymore?)

Lorcan wanted to go right back where they left off.

Was itching to be back on the frontier.

But what he didn’t realize was that Caleb was…well.

Tired.

All that time Lorcan had been sitting at home, anxious and irritable, a horse confined to the stables, he’d been either on his feet, or on his deathbed.

(It’s not like he got damn holidays off from work.)

“Ya’ gotta be kiddin’ me,” Lorcan groused. “It’s been half a year-”

“I was gone for two and a half months, and it’s been a month,” Caleb sniped. “That’s not half a year. Relax. Why do ya’ gotta be so difficult?”

“I’m goin’ crazy, I’m gettin’ cabin fever,” Lorcan complained. “What changed about ya,’ Caleb? Why doncha’ ya’ wanna go back out into the world?”

“The world almost killed me,” Caleb murmured.

“It was always tryin’ ta’ kill ya.’ Never bothered ya’ before. What happened out there, really?”

(Almost dying was so commonplace, it hardly felt like “something.” What did happen out there? Why did he feel so ambivalent to the thought of leaving? Where was that itch for destruction, that burning need to feel the flames of chaos licking at his flesh, lapping at his oozing mortality like a coquettish feral beast? Has he lost his edge? Has he gone mad, finally?)

“…You can lead the gang without me.”

Lorcan stared at him incredulously then, and Caleb let out a sigh, knowing he had just smacked a rabid dog in the rump.

“Who the fuck are ya’ and what have ya’ done with Caleb Quinn?”

“Have you seen my face, Lorcan? The old Caleb is fucked. I need time. But I also know you’re a dog locked in the attic. So, go. You don’t need a leash. I trust you to keep my men safe. And don’t get ahead of yourself. Just because you can go out on your own, doesn’t mean it’s any less _my_ gang, you hear?”

Lorcan brightened a little at the mention of the gang, but he still looked disappointed.

“It won’t be forever,” Caleb said. 

Then he did something rather out of character, something that felt wrong, but right in other ways.

He pecked Lorcan on the cheek.

(Don’t give him a look, don’t act surprised, shut up, shut your mouth, Lorcan, don’t smile either.)

“Stay safe, idiot.”

(His heart still clenched when Lorcan left without him. So much, he almost called him back, to insist he come with him, that he saddle up and join him, be by his side as he was always meant to be. But something held him back.)

“Something.”

As if he didn’t know.

Within an hour of Lorcan leaving, he went to see Jensen in his office.

Which he’d never done before.

So he couldn’t blame the surgeon for looking shocked.

But for some reason, that still irked him.

(Why so surprised?)

“Caleb! How can I help you?”

(How can you?)

He just said what felt right.

“Walk with me.”

A command.

(A question.)

Jensen grinned.

“Sure.”

(What did you want to talk about?)

“What did you want to talk about?”

What a small, pitiful prison yard.

Not that Caleb was really limited to the yard.

He could walk right out, right now.

Just keep walking, never come back.

(The warden would send people after him, but Caleb grinned at the thought of him sending Lorcan.)

“Lorcan wanted me to come with him. I didn’t go.”

(Why is he talking about Lorcan? Because he had to. Because it rolled off his tongue like a dirty cuss word.)

“Why not?”

“I didn’t want to.”

Other people might roll their eyes, but Jensen’s far too used to him by now.

He just smiled.

“And why is that?”

(Thought I might take a goddamn holiday.)

“Taking a holiday.”

Jensen chuckled.

“You’ve earned one. Although the warden won’t be too happy if you don’t get back to it eventually.”

“He’s busy.”

(Being a prick, and trying to find a new mother for the kids he never sees.)

They walked in silence for a moment, Caleb wondering if the warden was any closer to shutting down Bayshore, like he’d promised what felt like a lifetime ago, and Jensen stewing in his own perilously enigmatic thoughts.

After some time had passed, Jensen spoke again.

“Caleb, feel free not to answer this. But what did you do to get locked up here?”

(…He was expecting a much worse question.)

“I used to be an engineer for Henry Bayshore. He stole my inventions, so I tried to kill him.”

“Oh…I see.”

(I gutted him like a fish with the same railgun I used to kill men in front of you. Does that scare you?)

He thought maybe Jensen would get quiet again, and thank him for the walk, and leave.

But instead, he snorted.

“I thought it’d be worse.” 

(Worse?)

“You thought maybe I was a mass murderer?”

(I am. Depending on the day.)

“Maybe.”

Caleb absentmindedly touched his face, feeling the tingle of the new scar, lightly tracing the space where his jaw had been shattered.

“It doesn’t look that bad,” Jensen said, noticing what he was doing.

“It scares people.”

“No! I mean. Maybe-”

“I like that it scares people. Scared people don’t stay around to chat.”

“…Makes sense. You are a man of little words.”

(That’s one way to put it.)

“But aren’t you worried that’ll make you too alluring? Strong, silent, mysterious type?” Jensen asked, a hint of teasing in his voice. He was reaching up to grab a hold of his hat, which was being threatened by powerful gusts of wind, but was too late.

Lucky for him, Caleb’s reflexes were much quicker.

He caught it with just the tips of his fingers.

And put it back down on Jensen’s head.

“Only strange people like you would find such a type alluring,” Caleb said with a small, guarded smile, his hand lingering on the doctor’s head.

(Why does the air feel different? Why is Jensen looking so flustered? Oh, because he was still touching him. Let go.)

He let go.

“You’re not wrong,” the doctor croaked, his voice sounding strained.

(What is this? What are you thinking, Quinn?)

“Are you afraid of me?” Caleb asked, voice low, purposeful, a soft hum.

(He knows, doesn’t he? He knows everything. He knows, does he feel it too? Does he want the same thing? He’s staring at him as though he does, but Caleb doesn’t read people well, not really, Lorcan had been a fluke, an accident, and the warden was- well, he just took what he wanted, when he wanted it, so in this realm, Caleb was quite a novice, quite clueless, a juvenile bird, gliding without soaring.)

“A little. But what reasonable man wouldn’t be a little afraid?”

(…He liked that. He liked that a lot, the little tingle of excitement that raced up his spine, the jolt of heat that shook his core.)

“What do you think of me, Doctor Jensen? Don’t hold anything back.”

(Are you sure you want to hear this, are you sure? Absolutely. There was absolutely no reason not to know, not to put his cards on the table, play his hand, explore a territory that had been previously left undiscovered and ignored, uncivilized and unattached. What was he afraid of, judgment? Moral, aesthetic, personal? Judgment? Since when had he, Caleb Quinn, been afraid of judgment?)

“You’re very forward,” Jensen said with a nervous little laugh. “But I do like that. And I do like you. Rough around the edges. Standoffish, not a people person. But there’s something about you. Something…more. Like this…how do I put this? I’d seen flashes of it before, but I never understood it. Not until…you took a bullet for me. Until we started truly talking. You certainly have a temper, and it’s this great…malevolent force, like a hurricane, terrorizing the east coast. But there’s another side to it. This…rebellious streak. This desire to do whatever, and…whoever you want because you’d rather die than let others define you, or control you. You lash out like a flaming whip, but some people will always leave their marks on others, and on this world. I suppose I truly am strange, because I should be repulsed by that tendency, but I’m not.”

(He was an adventurer and a dreamer at heart, wasn’t he? How had he not seen it before? Was it the timid exterior, the safe and secure career as a doctor, the calm and easygoing temper, the rational, somewhat clumsy composure? But there was so much more to a man than the disconnect between his manners and his heart. He knew that. He remembered the keen sting of a slap against his face. He remembered being held fiercely, and tightly, the doctor shouting his name and demanding that he stay awake. That fire was always there. It just burnt a little less brightly. But no less persistently. How had he not seen it?)

“Why do you ask?”

(Why not?)

When Caleb paused, Jensen pressed, “Well, in the interest of fairness, may I ask you what you think of me?”

(What could he possibly say, that conveyed the depth of conflicting feelings he had, the cavalcade of emotions he had been introduced in that split second when he’d lunged into the path of a bullet? The destination that should not have mattered, that was simply a job, a project, a tedious means to an end, a single journey, here and back, nothing complicated? It sounded like a bad joke, what do a person and a destination have in common?)

“They both feel like home,” Caleb said aloud, without meaning to.

Then he shut his mouth abruptly.

A feeling he wasn’t accustomed to filled his body with lead.

(Something like shame?)

“Meet me in the warden’s office,” Caleb murmured. “Before you leave for the day?”

He didn’t wait for an answer.


	9. Dead Man's Switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am trash, and this is traaaaash.

“I should’ve fuckin’ known.”

Caleb shoved Lorcan away from him, feeling disgusted by the anger in his eyes, the curl of possessiveness in his drunken hands, fumbling at his shoulders with bruising rage.

“It’s none of your business.”

“I should’ve fuckin’ known. I thought it was always gonna be just me. But it wasn’t, not from the start, not now, not ever.”

“You’re over-reacting.”

Lorcan swung at him.

Caleb, not totally surprised, he did have that look in his eye, dodged the hit.

He grappled with the taller man as he charged at him, catching him around the middle.

Dust kicked up all around them, the wind swirling maddeningly, rancorously around, as though egging them on. 

Lorcan wasn’t hitting him as hard as he could be, not even close, but his fury was enough to draw out Caleb’s feral edge, pricking at his primal unconscious need to lash out at the smallest slight.

He slapped his partner across the face, and the man roared, not out of pain, but wrath.

He socked him in the stomach, and Caleb swore at him so fiercely that even a sailor wouldn’t been appalled.

He elbowed him in the face.

And from there, it was just a mess of blow after blow, mostly just squabbling, but with an ugly malice that reared its head every so often, its venomous fangs sinking in some real damage every now and again, leaving its keen sting in sensitive areas.

By the time they finally stopped, sick to death of one another, the wind had died down.

It was dead silent outside of the prison.

Just one night.

One night after Lorcan had returned, and he had found out.

And he was so furious, he’d demanded to speak with Caleb immediately, and dragged him out to the front yard.

Where anyone could see them.

Where people were probably watching them, right now, not prisoners maybe, but guards certainly.

“How did you find out?” Caleb demanded, breathless and aching and bruised just about everywhere.

They sat in the dirt, like children, covered in underbrush and filth, their clothes as ruffled as their tempers, their wide-brimmed hats in their dirty hands.

“I didn’t have a fuckin’ source,” Lorcan snarled. “But I knew. And when ya’ didn’t want to come wit’ me, I knew what you was gonna do, and I can practically smell it all over ya.’ I can see it in yer fuckin’ eyes, not guilt or shame, god knows ya’ don’t have any of that in a single bone in yer body, but fuckin’ disdain, like ya’ know something, you’re hidin’ somethin,’ yer pityin’ me. Tell me the truth, Caleb Quinn, how did ya’ fuck him?”

(I didn’t.)

“I-”

“Don’t lie ta’ me!”

“I didn’t.”

_He’d stared at Jensen._

_The doctor had stared back helplessly, his face a strange mixture of shame, awkwardness, and a touch of something else._

_Something he recognized, but never expected to see on the innocent young doctor’s face._

_And in a shade he’d never seen before._

_(The warden? Filthy, single-minded, careless, destructive.)_

_“How did you get in?”_

_Wordlessly, Caleb held up a key that he kept wedged between his bed and the wall._

_Jensen nodded pitifully, his face so soft and compassionate that Caleb felt a wave of nausea._

_(Lorcan? Untamed, unrestricted, ferocious, destructive, careless. Free.)_

_All an illusion._

_Time itself was beginning to slip away._

_But just for now, he could pretend to live here, in this moment, just this second._

_“He trusts you that much?”_

_(Trust? It was more like convenience.)_

_“When did you two start…?”_

_(How long had it been?)_

_“I don’t remember.”_

_(When did it start? How long had it been going on? Why did it feel as though he’d been stuck here his entire life, had he ever been young? When did this bone-weary rage begin coiling in his gut, poisoning his body with age and decay, like a life-sucking, debilitating chronic wound?)_

_“Have you always…?”_

_(Been like this? Maybe. He was a lonesome child, never liked anyone, male or female. Kept to his father’s workshop. Never spoke to the other boys at the camps, nor at his first few jobs. But there was one boy. One boy who was just as rough and rowdy as the others, could handle a rifle, could cook on his own, knew how to tell west from east when the sun went down, but had a soft side. He caught him letting a fox out of a snare. The little thing was half-dead, but he loosened the trap from its neck, tears in his eyes. And when he caught Caleb looking, he’d cussed him out, using every swear word he’d known, threatening to tear him limb from limb if he told anyone. And oddly enough, Caleb found that charming too.)_

_A nod._

_“Have you?”_

_(Because he must, he wouldn’t have come otherwise, he didn’t just want to talk, did he, he couldn’t?)_

_“Yes. And no. Only once before. And I wasn’t sure. And I’m not sure now…but I…”_

_(Laughter. Nervous. Expectant. But his eyes were so earnest.)_

“Where’d ya’ do it?” Lorcan demanded. “Did you fuck him, or did he fuck you?”

“Does it matter?”

(I didn’t do anything.)

_He wanted to._

_He walked forward slowly, then quickly._

_And when Jensen’s palms came up around his neck, he thought maybe the good doctor was going to put an end to this before it truly started._

_(That he was saying no. And Caleb’s sins might be forgiven.)_

_But when he pressed his cold lips against Jensen’s warm ones, he realized the doctor was simply holding him._

_Holding him tight, his fingers gripping the sides of his neck, tickling his throat._

_(So vulnerable. He could choke you, grab you around the throat and snap your neck, reach up and jam his fingers in your eyes.)_

_But of course, Jensen did none of that._

_He didn’t flinch away._

_He leaned forward and hummed into Caleb’s mouth, sending vibrations down his throat and tremors down his spine._

_(That spark became a wildfire, a match was lit and the skyline burned, the awkward blushing picture of a proper Catholic boy going up in flames, leaving nothing behind a ghostly afterimage.)_

_In a pantomime of a beast, Caleb pressed his mouth to the doctor’s throat, nose nuzzling into his warm flesh like a feasting predator, jaws prepared to open wide and take what was left of its prey’s life to sustain its own._

_Jensen gasped, but didn’t protest, didn’t try to defend himself._

_(He was so vulnerable, it was almost pitiful, and that made Caleb’s hunger even sharper, his thirst almost unbearable, his craving wanton and pitiful in its own way.)_

_Kissing him felt like there was liquid flames coursing through his veins instead of blood._

_Like the doctor could cut him open and instead of a beating heart, find a star, fallen to earth, dazzling in its death throes._

“Did you think we were husband and wife?” Caleb asked, his conflict hardening his guilt into barbed defensive cruelty. “Did you think we had a contract?”

(Did he think Caleb Quinn belonged to him? That anyone could own him?)

(Only the warden, a crueler voice whispered still.)

Even the wounded look on Lorcan’s face was all ice, a solid layer of frost covering a barren wasteland, a painting of devastation rather than a scene, the façade of a grand building with crumbling walls and gutted insides.

He opened his mouth, and Caleb thought he was going to curse him some more, spew insults like an erupting volcano after years of accumulating pressure and borrowed heat.

But his voice was hoarse.

(And so soft, it took him off guard. And perhaps that’s why his next words feel like an armor-piercing stab to the heart.)

“Why are ya’ lyin’ ta’ me?”

(He knew. He knew, that bastard, that sorry son of a bitch. The bounty hunter could hear it in his voice, he wasn’t just furious or jealous. He was mourning. He was self-destructing. He was falling into a pit, and grabbing at those around him, trying to take someone with him.)

And suddenly, the anger went out of him like air out of a balloon.

“Did you want me to say I love you?” Caleb asked humorlessly. He gently placed his hat back on his head. A gray hair fell into his face, and he suddenly wondered when he’d gotten old.

(How amusing. How ironic. His knight in shining armor, his brave adventurer, lovesick fool, crooning after a dame in some forgotten tower. Or perhaps neither of them was the hero, or the damsel in distress, but rather they were both dragons and demons, incapable of love or affection, only able to take what they want and destroy it once it was no longer wanted.)

Lorcan reached forward and Caleb braced himself under the darkening sky, feeling rain tapping gently against his hat, rolling down his forearms, and soaking into his pants.

But instead of grabbing his throat, or hitting him again, he bumped his knuckles against Caleb’s chin, a strange gesture of affection that only a couple of errant school boys might employ in the safety of their private woodland adventures.

(His insides twisted and melted at the tenderness in his touch, so unlike him.)

“Tonight?” Lorcan asked.

He should say no.

But he nodded instead. 

_Was kissing all he wanted?_

_A fury edging on violence aroused in his chest._

_Jensen was holding his arm, stopping him from reaching for his belt._

_“Not…I’m not ready,” he gasped, his face almost boyishly flushed._

_(Why was that so enraging?)_

_Out of cool spite, cool as a professional gambler under pressure, Caleb squeezed his cock through his pants._

_And the doctor’s knees almost buckled; he just barely caught himself on the warden’s desk._

_“Caleb, I’m not- I’ve never, not with anyone, just slow-”_

_He’d unleashed something in him, with his timid platitudes, his small, desperate gasps, the way he didn’t know what to do with his hands._

_(They grasped at his neck, his shoulders, even daring to touch his chest at one point.)_

_If fucking Lorcan was like two miserable predators slugging it out in the arena of survival, then kissing the doctor was the total surrender of the hunted to the hunter._

_And yet, he had not lied to Lorcan._

_Not about this, anyway._

_The doctor for all of his meek acceptance of Caleb’s probing touch, had still made it quite clear, had been quite firm by the end._

_He held Caleb back by the shoulders, looking flushed and messy and almost juvenile in his earnest, yet kind rejection._

_(And the bounty hunter realized right then and there, that Jensen was still surprising him.)_

Sitting quietly in his office, pretending to read medical journals, Jensen hoped he wasn’t blushing.

He hoped that, should someone peer in or knock on the door and let themselves in, they would not, could not guess what kinds of thoughts were racing through his head.

Because all he could think of was the slick drag of Caleb’s lips against his. The aggression of his tongue, sliding against his, flicking against his teeth, tickling the top of his mouth. He was clumsier than Jensen had expected, but about as belligerent as he could’ve predicted. Biting his bottom lip, gently, but still between his teeth, still forcing him to standby, to hold his own desires back (not that he knew what he wanted, or even what to do).

His hands were everywhere. On the small of his back, pulling him close.

Coming over his shoulders, their chests brushing, rubbing as Caleb grew more dogged in his attempts to close any distance left between them.

On his neck. Gripping the back of his head, his hair almost painfully tugged by the brutal strength of his fingers.

Jensen could feel a flush creeping up his neck.

He scrunched down at his desk, feeling self-conscious with absolutely no one around.

How had this happened?

How could it feel as though it happened fast, even though they had known each other for so long?

Had that bullet to the face scrambled his brains somehow, despite its trajectory into his jaw instead?

Had the other wound, deep in his stomach, scrambled up his entire makeup?

Caleb Quinn. The most terrifying man he’d ever met.

And yet.

Since the first day he had met him, the man had a special allure.

Almost as though, before he knew, he’d…known.

A kindred spirit.

Someone who understood.

Someone who…yearned.

In a world where their kind were far and few between, perhaps the merciful God could throw even sinners a bone every now and again.

Jensen grinned at the idea of some supernatural entity enabling the psychological attraction of kin to kin.

Of like spirits to other like spirits.

He fiddled with his pencil, absentmindedly doodling on a scrap piece of paper, drawing a cowboy hat.

How ironic.

How he’d always admired the rough and wild cowboys of the frontier.

How he’d always looked up to their rugged masculinity, their independence, fierce need for freedom, love of nature in all of its brutal and hard-fought glory.

How they intrigued him, and how strange, yet oddly fitting, for Caleb Quinn to be one of them, but so different from the rest of them as well.

Jensen grinned at the thought of the man, feeling like a young woman whose first suitor had just arrived on her doorstep.

And speak of the devil-

Jensen almost opened his mouth in polite greeting.

Because when he walked in like that, with his hat down, his great coat flaring out around his ankles, the man named Lorcan looked almost exactly like Caleb Quinn, a man of action, who walked with purpose and an air of arrogance.

But only in his walk.

As soon as Jensen got a clear look at the man, they were really nothing alike. 

And the doctor clamped his mouth shut into a polite, but nervous smile.

“Hello-”

“I don’t care for ya,’” Lorcan said abruptly.

His brusque tone was dripping in animosity.

He almost gave off waves of heat, the overworked engine of a runaway train, spluttering and exploding in sparks of power.

“I don’t understand his interest in ya.’ And if I were a gamblin’ man, I’d wager he loses interest in ya’ sooner rather than later. But at the same time, it don’t matter a bit. ‘Cuz yer what he’s choosin’ right now, and I gotta respect that. And I ain’t part of the crowd that believes in one and only one forever anyway.”

One and one forever?

Was that what Jensen wanted?

This seemed awfully fast.

He’d rather not think about it.

But, he supposed, he already knew Caleb wasn’t going to stop…whatever it was he had with Lorcan.

So this wasn’t a conversation that really should’ve taken him by surprise.

“And I think I might even hate ya.’ ‘Cuz he don’t need ya.’ ‘Cuz he’s nothin’ like ya,’ even if he wants to believe he is. ‘Cuz me and him are….we got more to us than the two of ya.’But he’s been feelin’ and actin’ real different lately. May be his age, he’s gettin’ on in years. Maybe this is just a phase, maybe he just needs this real bad right now. So I ain’t gonna fight him, and I reckon ya’ won’t fight him either. And ya’ did save Caleb’s life. And I have ta’ respect that, even if I don’t like ya.’”

He paused, staring at Jensen challengingly.

The bemused man stared back, his face as neutral and polite as he could make it.

“Thanks? Uh…I’m afraid I don’t know what exactly you’re trying to say-”

“I hate yer guts, but I wouldn’t hurt Caleb any more than I already have,” Lorcan growled. “And he wants to see ya’ tonight, in the warden’s private wine cellar. Eight p.m. sharp. Said it was important.”

He scowled at him then, his dislike quite evident.

But Jensen was still on a high.

And he just stared evenly back.

“Can’t wait,” he said dryly.

After he stalked out, Jensen had to wonder when they had spoken about this matter. If they had fought.

His stomach clenched at the idea of being the source of their quarreling.

But he couldn’t help but also feel a little...

He smiled guiltily, pencil leaning against his chin.

He wondered what Caleb wanted to say.

Was he going to…end things with Lorcan? Or talk about the possibility?

Did he want that?

No, no, this was too soon.

He couldn’t think about…no.

No, Caleb was…complicated.

Their relationship was…so new, and yet it was already more complicated than it needed to be.

No, best not to think about it.

And he didn’t really want Caleb to choose between the two of them. Not now.

Maybe not ever.

His stomach clenched with guilt at the thought of…this being a fleeting, insignificant passing moment in his life.

But still.

Things were happening too fast.

Best to play the situation by ear, adapt to new situations.

Regardless of what the future might hold…

They would talk tonight.

* * *

Lorcan rarely found himself overthinking any situation.

It was easy not to over-think.

Over-thinking was for brooders and thinkers, poets and philosophers.

He liked to drink, he liked to shoot, he liked to fight.

And he liked to fuck.

Before Caleb, and before Hellshire, he was a drifter. Did odd jobs. Never stayed in one place too often.

He’d always had an eye for men like him, though.

Drifters.

Men of ill morals.

Men who took what they wanted, gave nothing back, and were gone in the night before he could pull his boots back on.

Men who robbed from him, tried to kill him in his sleep.

Or worse, thought maybe he’d like a partner. One who could watch over him while he slept.

Nightmares, all of them.

But the kinds that haunt a man’s sleep, not his waking moments.

And he’d been living just fine before his infamous, bull of a temper got him thrown into Hellshire.

He’d be just fine and dandy if it wasn’t for Mr. Caleb Quinn, the Deathslinger, the most feared bounty hunter in the Midwest, a brutal and intelligent hunter with a cold, icy, inescapable glare.

That rage fueled him.

He didn’t overthink it.

As soon as Caleb left his sight, he had begun making a plan.

Not a complicated one, but one that came from the heart, was born of impulse and quick tempers.

He might regret it.

But it would be worth it.

To him, anyway.

Step one was already completed.

He didn’t dally.

Step two…

“Not right now,” Caleb groaned. “I don’t have the patience right now-”

“Nobody said nothin’ about patience!” Lorcan said. “Ya’ promised.”

“I did not.”

“Ya’ didn’t say it in words, but ya’ did promise, Quinn.”

“I don’t feel like it right now.”

“Get yer skinny ass up. I ain’t seen you since I left.”

“That is indeed how distance and travel works. And why do we have to leave? Can’t we just do it here?”

“I don’t want to do it here. I wanna take ya’ somewhere nice,” Lorcan said, his voice mocking and humorous, aware of the irony in his statement. “And shut yer smart mouth unless ya’ plan on usin’ it for somethin’ other than talkin.’”

Caleb rolled his eyes at the lechery in his voice.

“Come on,” Lorcan wheedled. “I ain’t seen ya’ in so long, and we just been fightin’ since I got back. I promise I won’t bring up nothin,’ I just want a good ole’ romp in the hay like we always used to. Nobody gonna say anythin’ about…the other guy. Come on.”

He tried to put on his most innocent, desperate, sex-deprived face.

But to Lorcan’s relief, Caleb didn’t resist any further.

He must’ve still felt guilty and stressed, and in need of some relief, or he just didn’t feel like arguing any further, because he sighed and stood up, muscles and bones cracking as he did.

He followed Lorcan rather closely, his hand lingering at near his wrist, stroking it softly, his slightly smaller fingers sending shivers through his arm.

He didn’t ask where they were going.

Because he knew.

There were a few places they could have some privacy, the warden’s office, Caleb’s cell, one or two storage closets situated as far from prisoner quarters as possible.

The place that Lorcan was leading him to was more of a special-occasion location.

But this was a special occasion, Lorcan reasoned. Even if Caleb didn’t know it.

Lorcan wasn’t messing around tonight, Caleb mused.

Their foreplay was hardly a slow and drawn out affair to begin with, but tonight he was anxious about something.

Because he was on Caleb’s shirt immediately, untucking it, unbuttoning it, and throwing it aside, on a shelf in the wine cellar.

His fingers briefly ran up and down Caleb’s chest, but didn’t linger long before attacking his pants.

Caleb helped him pull them off, settling on the pile of sacks and washcloths and towels stored down here, in the storage room right beside all of the warden’s expensive aging wines.

Before he could move things around, to make himself comfortable, Lorcan was on him again, biting bruises into his neck and collar, worrying at his flesh like a dog trying to make significant progress on a bone with its sharp canines.

As his mouth attacked his skin, his hands attacked Caleb’s body, immediately pawing at his ass.

Caleb heard the familiar pop of the petroleum jelly lid, and sighed.

Really not going to mess around, huh?

But he leaned back, propping up his ass to make it easier for him.

Sighing again, this time more with slight physical discomfort rather than exasperation.

His fingers are cold.

They push past his rim, uncomfortable as they impatiently jam inside of him, trying to loosen him up quickly rather than carefully or efficiently.

Caleb didn’t hate this part, in fact it could be fun, if Lorcan was in the right mood, but tonight’s mood was already established.

So he wasn’t surprised at all when Lorcan pulled out his cock much too soon.

Caleb expected to be tipped down onto his back. For Lorcan to pull his legs around him, to support his ass with his hands, forcing his spine to arch, and allow his partner to ram himself inside as hard and fast as he can, their thighs rubbing together so quickly they could set the room on fire. Or for Lorcan to bear down on him, good old-fashioned Christian missionary, just see how far and deep he could fuck with just willpower, Caleb simply interlocking his legs around his waist and doing his best to simply hold on. Or for Lorcan to turn him over on his side, and line himself up with Caleb’s barely slicked hole, hips rolling like the New England waves against rocky shores, his breath hot on the back of his neck, hands around his chest in a death grip, the parody of a mother holding her son to her chest and whispering encouragement into his ear.

But…

“Turn over,” Lorcan said.

* * *

Jensen had never, ever, thought the words, “I wouldn’t mind dying right now.”

But there was a first time for everything.

For many things.

And tonight…tonight had a lot of firsts.

He’d arrived early for his talk with Caleb, so had felt bolt enough to steal some cheese and grapes from elsewhere in the food pantry.

He’d been sitting there, off in the corner, sequestered away in the wine cellar when the door had suddenly slammed open.

And in the adjacent room, the storage room, for food and for a variety of other items of equal value, he’d seen, and heard, two people stumble in.

Two people.

So he’d said nothing, terrified of who they could be, nurses, guards, administrators, any number of incriminating eye witnesses.

But then he heard…little gasps.

Familiar gasps.

And sighs.

And he’d been confused.

But only for a second.

Because they sounded familiar.

And suddenly, he knew he’d been played.

He knew he had been tricked.

And he knew who the other two occupants of the room were.

But he had to confirm it.

Morbid curiosity.

A dark, masochistic desire.

They both drove him to look, even though he knew, knew he’d been tricked, knew that Lorcan was playing a sick game, knew that Caleb, if he was in on the “joke,” was the last person he wanted to see in this position, right now.

He looked.

And he saw Caleb, completely naked, in all of his scarred, toned glory.

His hard chest, muscular thighs, strong arms, thick from harsh living and an unforgiving trail, covered in many scars, from the minor to the life-threatening.

And…his cock, only about half-mast.

And….god, Lorcan’s fingers…

Jensen felt heat rising in his face, his eyes wide as quarters.

His skin felt like he had caught fire just at the sight of a very naked Caleb Quinn, lying spread-eagle on the floor, his posture relaxed, his eyes unfocused. He was making sounds like an exhausted animal, Lorcan pushing inside of him with slicked fingers, rather impatiently prying at his anus with rapid little thrusts.

“That’s three,” he murmured. “Wanna go for four?”

Caleb whacked him on the head, and he laughed.

Jensen wanted to look away, because this show was for him, this game was for him to play, and the only way to win was not to play it.

But he couldn’t.

Because in that moment, Lorcan paused.

And Jensen’s eyes drifted to his upper back, to the tension in his shoulders.

“Turn over.”

Caleb hesitated.

For a wild second, Jensen though maybe he knew he was there.

Maybe he knew Lorcan was taunting him.

Maybe he was going to come over right now-

But then, all of his hopes were shattered.

Because Caleb did as he asked.

He turned over and settled his ass in Lorcan’s lap.

Jensen ducked, terrified of being seen, and heard.

But Caleb wasn’t looking in his direction.

“Bend over like the rude little pup ya’ are,” Lorcan said, voice teasing. He smacked Caleb’s ass a little, and the man at least had the dignity to look back at him with annoyance.

“Do get on with it,” Caleb said impatiently.

Lorcan’s only response was to knead the flesh of his ass more, looking amused.

He leaned forward and did something, and Caleb let out a deep-throated moan like he’d been stabbed.

Despite himself, Jensen felt his stomach jump at the noise.

And in spite of his fear, and his anxiety over this situation, he dared to look more closely.

Oh….

Oh, Good Lord On High.

He was _licking_ Caleb’s ass, his chin invisible from this angle, but his nose buried between his cheeks. He was actually holding them apart with his hands, prying open his partner’s hole as wide as he could.

And to his great humiliation, Jensen’s cock twitched in his pants.

And to his horror, he could feel himself stiffening when Lorcan stopped, leaned forward, and shoved Caleb’s head down.

“Keep yer face down and yer ass up,” he suggested. “Thought we could try this.”

“My face down?” Caleb protested. “Can’t I just ride you? Or we could be face-to-face, or side to-”

Whatever he was saying was cut off by Lorcan, who pulled his ass up by the hips.

Caleb actually squeaked, or something like that, a noise so helpless and undignified and out of character that Jensen couldn’t believe it had come out of his mouth.

He bore down on his partner, not penetrating him yet, but rubbing his cock over his entrance.

God, he hated how hard and hot his dick felt.

He truly, truly hated Lorcan and the fact that his cock was throbbing at the sight of Lorcan’s hand tangling itself in Caleb’s hair and squished his face into a pile of towels.

“Keep your forehead and shoulders to the floor,” Lorcan instructed.

“Lorcan-”

“It’ll be fun,” his partner insisted over his protests. “Just…relax. Don’t worry about anythin.’ I’ve got ya.’

Jensen silently begged Caleb to say something, to protest again.

To say he wasn’t in the mood, and this was far enough, thank you.

But another side of him, the side that wasn’t thinking clearly, was furious just at the thought of it.

And then Lorcan slipped his cock inside of Caleb’s ass.

He couldn’t see the entire disgusting, lewd act.

But he could see the thin sliver of skin where the two were connected.

And he could hear it, the dirty squelching, the slap of skin rubbing vigorously against skin.

And the worst part.

The worst part was that he actually leaned in closer to see better.

The worst part was that Caleb’s face was down. His eyes were closed and he was leaning his cheek into the floor, his entire body flushed with excitement. His arms were flat beneath him, lying under his legs, the rest of his body propped up in a dehumanizing display of utter submission to the man on top of him.

The worst part was that Caleb’s ass was perfect, his posture was perfect, his body looked so warm, and inviting, sprawled out on the floor in the most humiliating pose a man could be in.

And the worst part was that Lorcan looked up at the exact time he looked over.

And their eyes met.

And Lorcan smiled.

A terrible, knowing smile.

He fucked into Caleb particularly hard in that split second, and the man moaned underneath him, a little, punched-out gasp, like it was shoved out of him by force.

And Jensen felt wetness in his pants, a spurt of stick fluid coating the inside of his crotch.

And to top off his humiliation, he saw that he had cum, without touching himself, to the mere sight of Caleb Quinn being fucked in front of him.


	10. Hex: Retribution

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is the...final chapter.
> 
> It has been an honor writing porn for myself, and for all of you.

_“I feel like I don’t know ya’ anymore.”_

_(Since when did we talk?)_

“Do you ever wonder how your life would be like, if things had turned out differently?”

(…What is he rambling about? Caleb didn’t want to think about it. He just wanted to sleep. Jensen was warm. Not soft, but warm. Alive.)

_“…When did you want this to become complicated?”_

_“I wasn’t the one who complicated things.”_

_(Neither was I.)_

“I think about sometimes if I’d become…something else. If I would’ve regretted it. Or if this is the life I will regret.”

(How Lorcan would scoff if he could see him now. But freedom wasn’t always sharp, rough, the biting cruelty of a soul barbed with gnawing untamed hooks, thrashing in its confines. It could be soft, and fragile, and vulnerable. It could be tender. A loving impartial claw, pulling gently but insistently at the corners of his heart.)

_“You’re not this simpering little lovesick creature.”_

_(Lovesick creature? Caleb flicked brain matter off his wrist, looking coldly at his partner.)_

_“Comparatively,” Lorcan admitted, a glimmer of humor in his eyes, just the slightest spark of their old life lighting up his eyes._

“I hate it sometimes. Watching people die. Despite my best efforts. Or, sometimes, because of them. I wish I was…someone else.”

(Is it ok to be silent? To simply lay there, on his chest, feeling gusts of air brush against his hair as the doctor sighed.)

_“Can’t I fuck more than one person at once?” Caleb asked._

_“No,” Lorcan said mulishly._

_“It can be one person, if you like.”_

_Lorcan glared at him, but he stared back evenly._

_(If that’s what you want.)_

It wasn’t.

He needed to leave.

“You can stay.”

(No.)

_“Ya’ been to his home? Seen ‘is property?” Lorcan sneered. “Going ta’ move away ta’ New England and meet his parents?”_

_When Caleb didn’t answer, moody and sullen, Lorcan snorted._

_“Just fucking?”_

_Caleb didn’t reply to that either, but this time, his silence was more revealing._

_His partner in crime gaped at him._

_“Ya’ still haven’t fucked?”_

He’d gotten too close.

This was a mistake.

Even though they still hadn’t…done anything.

This was his worst sin.

Hundreds dead or mangled by his own hand, and he was the most ashamed of this.

_“There’s no reason ta’ stay. Nothin’ holdin’ us here.”_

_“Except our sentences.”_

_“Who does he rely on ta’ bring people back? You and me. Ya’ really think any of the gang would follow him? They’d follow us. They’d help us and we would serve no one but ourselves. Why ya’ stayin’ anyway? He ain’t puttin’ Bayshore away. Ya’ know that, don’t ya?’ Can’t ya’ tell? It’s been too long. We can kill Bayshore ourselves. Or just forget all ‘bout him. Come away with me, Caleb Quinn. That’s the best proposal ya’ll ever get out of me.”_

“Are you rich?” Caleb asked instead of answering his question.

Jensen smiled.

“I own land.”

That was a yes.

“So why don’t you farm?”

(He could see that so easily in his mind’s eyes. Jensen in a straw hat, hoe in hand. Staring up at the sky and daydreaming instead of mending his broken fence.)

“A noble pursuit. But my interests have always been in the human body.”

(…Is he blushing?)

_“Is it him?”_

_(No. No.)_

_“Don’t lie ta’ yerself, Caleb. It’s sad ta’ watch.”_

_(Not a lie. He couldn’t know for sure. He didn’t want to think about it.)_

_“What future do ya’ think ya’ have with him?”_

_(The future? Who gave a shit about that? He was no prophet.)_

“Did you want to be a farmer?”

He laughed at that.

Jensen smiled.

“Had to ask. Almost sounded like you wanted to settle down.”

(On a farm? With him? With Jensen? Forever? Give up the hunt?)

“Never.”

(…Was that anger swelling in his chest? Smoky, familiar, a scotch abandoned long ago, but always lurking, at his lowest moments?)

_“I know ya’ better.”_

He wasn’t wrong.

That could never be his life.

Eventually, he would give this up.

He had to.

Jensen would be called somewhere else.

He’d go back to his parents.

Or, more likely, he, Caleb Quinn, infamous Deathslinger of the Wild Frontier, bloodhound of the Hellshire Penitentiary, would bleed out in the wilderness somewhere, drenched in blood and viscera, surrounded by the corpses of his enemies, and the suffocating cloak of his own mortality.

His greatest hope was that perhaps the last thing he would see was not the ground, but the sky, stretched out before him, the stars imprinted in his dying eyes, swimming in a bottomless pool of hatred and acceptance. The closest to heaven he could ever be, a little piece of it, to bring with him to the depths of hell.

(Don’t worry about the future. He had none. He had guaranteed that himself. And looking back on his choices…he would do it all again. Well. Not exactly the same. If he could do it all again, he’d kill Bayshore properly.)

_“It was always going to be easier with me.”_

_But that wasn’t true either._

_No, it wasn’t._

A dusty little outpost in Arizona territory.

Unremarkable, with only one saloon, a trading outpost, a post office, a general goods store, a water tower, a wind mill, and a few rickety little houses clustered together.

A shabby and dirty little place.

And yet, it was at what Jensen referred to as the “crossroads” of civilization, at a vital distance from several more impressive key trading towns in all directions.

And thus, the lifeblood of villainy ran through its veins.

Caleb and Lorcan arrived early one morning, with five or six of the Hellshire Gang trailing just behind them. They had come to collect the bounty of multiple train robbers, a gang known as the Southern Railroad Raiders, each with a wanted, dead or alive, bounty on their heads. The warden, content with his new marriage, with a child on the way, had told them that if they collected most, if not all, of these bandits then they could live it up for three months, give themselves a little holiday.

There was an unusually high concentration of criminals and bounty hunters in the area, all shades of morally gray, from straight-and-narrow men of the law to sleazy bounty hunters with grudges on their shoulders and a single-minded dedication to rewards over justice to the gangsters themselves, watching both of them, as well as other criminals, with shifty eyes.

It felt as though the whole town was holding its breath, waiting for someone to make the first move.

Every group had exactly that: a group.

Once the fighting broke out, it was all over. Each and every person here would be brought into the fray.

Lorcan was brimming with anticipation, fingering his gun, staring at those they passed with bright, bloodthirsty eyes.

Caleb could practically feel the itch in his partner’s throat.

“Restrain yourself,” Caleb warned.

“Always do, darlin,’” Lorcan murmured.

Caleb scowled at him.

Anyone could’ve heard that.

But his partner ignored him.

_Cold rage._

_A simmering rage, boiling just below the surface._

_A thirst he had felt sporadically through out his life, but never so strongly, never so powerfully as now._

_And that was before he picked up that damn newspaper._

They’d been sitting under the stars.

The hangman’s nooses gently swaying overhead, an almost ironic bridge between the earth and the heavens.

“You think they’ll pass through here?” Lorcan asked.

“Absolutely,” Caleb said.

Their legs dangle off in morbid imitation of two schoolboys, fishing in the local pond.

“We’ll kill ‘em all. Then we’ll drag their corpses back to Texas, and celebrate.”

Smoke billowed from Caleb’s mouth, dissipating into the warm night air, cigar thick and heavy between his fingers as his eyes caught the trail of stars overhead.

“Sure.”

“Try and pretend yer excited, Quinn.”

“I’m not your wife,” Caleb retorted.

He laughed at that.

“Ya’ do everything a wife should do and more.”

Caleb made as though to shove him off the gallows.

Lorcan grinned and resisted, leaning his head against his shoulder instead.

Caleb was immediately alert, looking around suspiciously, instinctively scoping out the surrounding area for possible bystanders.

But no one was looking at them.

They skulked in the shadows, most avoiding looking at the nooses altogether.

Only Lorcan and Caleb seemed comfortable straddling the impartial judge between the beginning and the end.

Lorcan sighed, turning his head and rather uncharacteristically kissing Caleb’s neck, so soft and sweet that the hair of his neck stood on end.

But he didn’t push him away.

He let the kiss burn itself into his skin, relished in the discomfort, and thrill, of trusting someone enough to let them close, desiring vulnerability rather than the safety of solitude.

Craving the danger inherent in this kind of public intimacy.

(Does anyone care? Don’t they know? What it’s like out here, in a lawless wilderness, with only yourself and the partner whose life is in your hands? What are societal conventions in lands bereft of society?)

_The warden had lied._

_He’d been lying all along._

_That scummy little piece of shit, the motherfucker, the rat-faced weasel with the body of a pig, whose name had popped out, had caught Caleb’s eye as he sat down, stony-faced, at the saloon._

_Alone._

_Bitter rage, sharp and flaming and more ferocious than it had ever been gripped his chest._

_The unfairness. The injustice._

_And worst of all, the nerve._

_Retribution would be had._

No one who survived that night at Glendale would be able to agree with any other survivors on who started it all.

Some say it was the bounty hunters. The sleazy-eyed, slinking criminal rats would boast that they started it.

Those who didn’t talk much, but would whisper the story to others in dingy saloons and taverns, would murmur that it was not them, that all they knew was that one second it was dead silent, save for a murder of crows cawing late into the night, and then the next, a gunshot rang out.

And immediately, guns were drawn.

More shots rang out.

_They didn’t speak._

_The rest of his gang, normally so rowdy and boisterous, was dead silent._

_He told them what he intended to do._

_He didn’t ask them. He didn’t order them._

_He simply told them that he only had one hunt left._

_And it was a long-time coming._

_And he threw down the newspaper._

_And that was all they needed._

_And they all stepped forward._

_And said they would be by his side till the end, living the way they always had, fighting for him, and for themselves, till their dying breaths._

_He had nodded._

_But although he was honored, he didn’t have anything left in him to be touched by their loyalty, moved by their dedication to a hopeless cause._

_Everything was numb and even though they twinkled on above, innocent and carefree and comforted by their millions of brothers and sisters, never alone, not for a single second in their eternal lives, the stars had gone dark._

Caleb had been asleep.

It was Lorcan’s shift.

He had jerked awake as soon as the firing began.

Disregarded his speargun, because in a firefight like this, what good would it do?

Sought his side revolver.

But by the time he was out of his tent, Lorcan was gone.

And it was utter bedlam.

His entire gang was scattered to the winds, some crouching behind rocks, others perched behind buildings, firing wildly and in all directions.

Bullets whizzed through the air.

Caleb had to throw himself to the ground, and even there he wasn’t safe.

A bullet actually skimmed so closely by him that he felt it rip at the corner of his hat.

All he could do was hunker down, find the biggest cluster of his gang, shuffle them towards safety, and fortify a location just off to the side, a large rock just underneath the water tower,

For close to fifteen minutes, bullets tore through flesh, men and some women falling down all around them. Two of Caleb’s men were shot and killed instantly. Three were wounded.

Only four, not including Caleb himself, were unharmed.

But where was Lorcan?

Caleb dared peek over the top of their cover when the shots paused, as everyone scrambled to reload.

There were corpses scattered everywhere.

There couldn’t be many more people left alive.

A quick scan of his surroundings told him that there could only be on group left, besides their own.

And then he saw him.

Tall, long, confident, and still roguishly handsome in a rough-and-tumble way, he charged across the center of the dusty main street, coming from the saloon, where he must’ve been hiding all of this time.

(You fool, you blasted cretin, you horse’s ass, you braying jackass, get your ass back over here.)

A shotgun rang out then, along with a scream.

Caleb leapt to his feet, pistol in hand, prepared to back up his partner, even though it was madness.

Lorcan was a savage creature, catching his prey completely by surprise.

He killed two men with his shotgun, and another with his side arm.

And the last, he leapt on like a coyote, fists pummeling the shocked man right in the face, snapping his head violently from side to side.

Blood stained his knuckles, splattering up into his face, as he beat the man, kept beating him long after he’d stopped struggling and just lay there.

Caleb kept walking towards him, prepared to drag him off the dying man, since it was over, it was all over, there were no survivors.

But he never did.

Because he was wrong.

There were survivors.

Specifically, there was one.

The postman.

Who’d been cowering in his office the entire time, and who had only just gathered the courage to peek out his shattered window.

He hadn’t seen Caleb.

All his terrified eyes saw were Lorcan, glorious and repulsive in his survival, vicious and miserable in his ecstasy.

He had a pistol of his own.

And Caleb reacted instinctively, not caring that he was innocent, not caring that he was just a bystander, that he was a victim, that he was just terrified.

He took aim and fired.

And didn’t miss.

His bullet splattered through the postman’s glasses, cutting a line straight through his nose, right into his brains, painting the wall behind him in scarlet. The man crumpled to the floor instantly, dead so swiftly that he likely hadn’t felt a thing.

But it didn’t matter.

As poor as his aim was, as terrible as the accuracy of these pistols could be, by sheer misfortune or kismet, his shot did hit its target.

Not in the head, where it was aimed, but in Lorcan’s back.

The man crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut mid-dance.

_“The warden,” Caleb murmured. “I want him dead. Kill anyone who gets in the way.”_

_He thought of Jensen then, and something flickered in his chest, not quite a feeling, not quite a sensation, but a little dull inkling of regret._

_But there was nothing left in him._

_Nothing redeemable, nothing worth saving, no hopes, no dreams, no otherworldly sense of purpose or worth._

_It was all washed out of him in a great flood, the pain so paralyzing in its initial wave, that now there were no nerve endings left._

_They had all dripped out of him, leaking out of him in a river of blood, leaving behind a lifeless husk, only pantomiming the appearance and motions of life._

_(Stay out of the way, Doctor. Cower in your office. Don’t get in their way. Please. I am no savior, no bodyguard, no saint, I’m not even a person, I am a force of wrath, and I cannot protect you from them. I cannot protect you from myself.)_

“Lorcan,” Caleb whispered brokenly. “Stay awake.”

He bound his wound.

He clutched rags of his torn shirt to Lorcan’s flesh, letting them soak in what felt like gallons and gallons of blood.

But it pooled out of him like a delta leading out to the ocean, filling the sand, soaking it with life force.

Lorcan’s eyes were almost gray, his skin white as paper.

He couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t seem to even focus, didn’t recognize Caleb.

The Deathslinger clutched his hand in his and begged him not to go.

But his eyes were on the night sky, and for the first time since Caleb had known him, he was looking right through him.

He didn’t say a word when he died.

Nothing romantic, nothing tender, nothing kind, nor even a curse, at his rotten luck, at Caleb’s cowardice, at his indecision, at his callous and cruel absence.

He left that world with barely a whimper.

(A man so alive, so warm, so in lust with life and its many pursuits, without a single goodbye to any of them. Abandoned. Betrayed. Forgotten. As if none of it had ever happened, as though he were just a dream, turned nightmare.)

And that shattered Caleb to pieces, struck at his core with decisive precision.

_They tore at his clothes, pummeled him with their fists._

_They got in good blows, smashed his nose, broke it, blood spurting out._

_But he stabbed them in the stomachs, churning out their guts, cutting through intestines and organs and spilling them out all over the floor._

_He beat their faces into bloody unrecognizable sacks of meat._

_He and his gang stormed the prison, heading right for the warden’s office and killing all who crossed their path._

_And when he found not just the warden, but Henry Bayshore himself, cowering in his office, the same office he had been called to countless times, a shadow of a grin crossed his face._

_(He was a walking corpse, an undead ghoul, the ghost of a man, not smiling but mimicking the motion, a ghastly spasm of life long after its departure.)_

His old cell.

Cold. Empty.

The mattress and bed frame removed.

Just an empty room.

Caleb stumbled in.

He’d been grazed by bullets.

Had gashes in his legs, where they had tried, in vain, to stab him with their daggers and the sharp ends of their guns.

His left arm hung at an odd angle, because he had been rushed by multiple men, and they had shoved him into a wall, probably dislocating his shoulder.

But it didn’t matter.

Here was where it all began.

And here was where it would all end.

(Lorcan. Lorcan. Lorcan.)

The prisoners were screaming with joy, and rage, and pain.

They were running amok.

(Jensen. Jensen. Are you ok?)

But it was perfunctory. It was…inconsequential now. Jensen, if he was still alive, was on his own, because Caleb Quinn could no longer walk. He was not long for this world, and those who were still alive would no longer be his concern soon.

(Lorcan. Lorcan, you and I…could never…not in heaven…but in hell….perhaps?)

He smiled to himself.

An empty gesture, more out of habit than anything.

Another muscle spasm.

A parting thought.

He had not had to live long without him.

(He was ok with that.)

_(My vengeance is complete. My time is up. My life is over. I have no regrets. I have no one left.)_

_(No one?)_

_(Lorcan was right. Jensen…was never his future. He was a good person. He helped people. He cared about them. He didn’t possess a wild stream, an untamable, uncontrollable force that drove him to unspeakable violence. And the irony is not lost on Caleb, the fact that if it had been Jensen there, instead of Caleb, Lorcan would not have died. All Caleb could do was watch him fade away. All he could do was destroy. And now his time was up. Jensen’s was not. He still had much good to do, and Caleb could not, would not hold him back. He would find a new life, a real future, with someone who truly understood him, who had not simply pretended to, out of perverse desire to see what it was like, to be the good guy.)_

Fog clouded his eyes.

He blinked.

A path opened before him, the walls of the cell fading away.

He rose to his feet.

Walked forwards.

With every step, the pain dissipated and he was filled with energy, with purpose, an almost supernatural power.

Silhouettes danced around the edges of his vision.

Silhouettes like the warden, and Henry Bayshore, and boys who used to bully him, used to mock his Irish ancestry, and all the criminals who’d ever shot at him.

This couldn’t be heaven.

But if it were hell….where was Lorcan?

Who else would greet him at hell’s gates?

He didn’t question it any further, though.

Because there was a darkness at the end of the path.

A great big spider-like creature.

Some kind of bizarre alien…entity.

He took one more step towards it, and its great nasty hook-like claws sprang out, caught him, and pulled him towards it.

And after that, everything went black.


	11. Endgame

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I suck dick on Coldwind Farm as a killer, so.

(Where…?)

But he knew where he was.

How could he not?

This was where it all ended.

Glenvale.

Only, it wasn’t.

It was a replica, a shallow imitation, with closed-in fences that didn’t exist in the real Glenvale.

And these…loud, noisy machines.

Strange, but oddly familiar. As he stared at them, he got a sense that they were somehow his enemy.

They were not to be ignored, and had some vital role in this…place, whatever it was.

And there were…hooks.

Hanging everywhere.

The longer he stared at them, the more certain he became that these hooks were also very important.

Caleb Quinn’s eyes drifted about uneasily, not sure what to do or what to think.

He caught sight of the place where Lorcan had fallen, where he had died in his arms, and something almost like sorrow clutched at his throat, forcing him to swallow dryly.

But another instinct in him told him that now was not the time.

It was…a familiar instinct.

And yet, also different.

Before…this instinct was…strong. It hungered, late at night, in moments of vulnerability.

When he was wronged, cheated by others. When he encountered the scum of the earth, and knew that his own judgment aside, he was doing the world a favor by cleansing it of their filth.

But now.

Now it burned like an actual need, as though he had been in a desert for days, and needed water.

He did not know what to do about this need, just that the itch was too powerful to resist, even if he wanted to.

(What do you want, what is it, what do we need, why do we feel this way, it hurts, make it stop, please, Caleb, do what needs to be done?)

But his indecision and confusion over what he needed to do, was quickly assuaged.

Because he saw movement.

A young man.

Rather tall, handsome, arrogant-looking.

Muscular and built well.

He was running.

Running away from him.

(Go, go, get him. Do not let him go!)

He obeyed that instinct, that voice in his head, without hesitation.

His muscles sang with the burn, with the pleasurable energy that hummed in his veins.

This was what he needed, this was what he was supposed to do.

And-and in his hands was his treasured speargun.

He took aim.

Perfect shot.

It buried itself into his shoulder, and he screamed like a pig being slaughtered.

And Caleb felt a shiver of pleasure tingling through his spine at the sound.

He dragged him back.

And stabbed him in the back.

The man went down with another scream.

Caleb chuckled to himself, thinking that was almost too easy.

(Now what, now what, now-?)

The hooks sparkled out of the corner of his eye.

They drew him like moth to flame, beckoning for him to come closer.

He hauled the whimpering, dying man over his shoulder, like he would the corpse of a wanted bounty.

And he walked over to one.

And with one great heave, he threw him onto the hook.

The man shrieked, loud and piercing, the sound echoing through out the ghost town, and the Deathslinger smiled.

Another hunt.

There were more.

Not just this one.

But more.

How many, he was not sure, not yet.

But he would find them all.

They couldn’t go anywhere.

They were trapped with him.

Were trapped until they could…hm.

The machines were churning so loud, he couldn’t think-

Oh.

The machines.

Of course.

How noisy.

Caleb walked over to the nearest one, following his ears, and an unearthly presence that gave him an almost supernatural vision, one that cut through walls and allowed him to see these strange machines.

And then he saw another one.

This one a black woman, a slave perhaps, or maybe a freed woman.

She was running too.

And she had someone else with her, another woman, a skinny little thing, with a pinched-up face.

(Don’t let them escape, don’t let them escape, chase, chase, hunt, kill, sacrifice- sacrifice for me, Caleb Quinn, your final, eternal hunt.)

_Claws._

_Hooks._

_Gesturing to him from the bottom of a lake of stars._

_A space between heaven and hell, not earth but purgatory._

_A punishment?_

_A reward?_

_Or neither?_

_Oh how he yearned to be with Lorcan._

_But perhaps this was for the best._

_What more could they say?_

_What could they do, that they had not done while they were alive?_

_As pathetic and tragic as it was, his life had never amounted to much._

_He simply had nothing to offer the world._

_But this place…this…being._

_He had what it craved, what it desired._

_He could please it._

_He could have purpose again._

_(And it was so much better than something as pointless as contentment, as intimacy, as bonds of affection, and love. What had any of those done for him, besides cause him great pain, great misery, great longing, great regret? Better to stick with what he was always good at. This was a new chance, a new shot at the life he should’ve lived. Here, he was just as imprisoned as he was back at Hellshire. But at least here, he knew he was not free. And somehow, was at peace with that knowledge. Completely, and utterly, at peace.)_

Sometimes the prey escaped him.

Outsmarted him.

They worked together on those machines.

They opened gates to realms he could not enter himself.

The being, the entity, punished him when he failed to keep these gates closed.

So he tried harder, worked on new strategies, plotted, schemed, thought of ways to improve the hunt, for himself, and for the entity.

And in this realm, time did not pass.

He hunted. He killed.

And time still did not pass.

So he resigned himself to his new fate.

And allowed his mind to be corrupted, to be wiped clean, all memories of his past life fading into the unexamined recesses of his mind.

Until.

One day.

He had killed three.

There was only one left, and he hunted for them with a vengeance, infuriated at this one’s ability to hide.

The thirst spiked in his throat, almost physically painful in its intensity.

He gritted his teeth and cocked his gun, trying to find the little fucking rat, growing more and more desperate as time dragged on.

Until finally, as the ground began to collapse, as the pale imitation of Glenvale began to shimmer, like a mirage, he spotted them.

In a white lab coat.

Running.

Running for one of the exits.

(Gotcha.)

He aimed down sights.

Another perfect shot.

The spear impaled the man straight through the shoulder blades.

The man screamed.

The Deathslinger dragged him closer and hit him in the back with the butt of his gun.

His victim went down with a squeal.

He reloaded the gun, reeling the spear back up into position.

And he stared dispassionately down at the troublemaker who’d extended the game so long, who had the nerve to evade him.

The little mouse was bleeding out on the ground.

He groaned, and turned over.

(….?)

His instinct asked him what he was doing.

Why wasn’t he picking him up?

Putting him on a hook, like his three friends?

Like he had been doing for…only the entity would know how long, exactly, if time even affected this place.

Why…?

The man met his eyes steadily.

And his eyes widened, not in pain or shock, but in recognition.

“…Caleb?”

Caleb.

Caleb.

(Caleb Quinn. Caleb Quinn, son of Patrick Quinn and Madigan Quinn, arrested, imprisoned for murder-for killing-for trying to kill- Henry Bayshore- Hellshire-? Hellshire…Prison? Penitentiary? Hellshire…)

“Caleb. It’s me. It’s Jensen.”

The Deathslinger jerked away from him, as though the man dying on the ground were a rearing rattlesnake.

(Jensen, Doctor Jensen, the good doctor, the kind one, who saved your life, who held you tightly, and hugged you close to his chest, and whispered dreams into your ear, he’s here, he’s alive-no, he’s-he’s trapped here, with…with-us…)

“Do you…remember me?”

(No, no, no.)

Except that wasn’t true.

It was all flooding back to him.

All of it.

Who he used to be, what he used to be…

(No, no, what’s happening? What…have I become?)

(No, no, be quiet. You were always a hunter. You are not here by accident. You were brought to this realm because of your skills, because of your needs, your own desires, not just mine. You are mine, but you are also your own destructive needs. It was not I who put you in Hellshire.)

“Jensen,” Caleb Quinn whispered. His name was like an old song, a mother’s lullaby, forgotten with age, but easily recalled on lonely nights. “Jensen.”

“…Caleb,” the doctor said with a smile, the pain forgotten.

That smile.

Caleb hated how his stomach still twisted at that, after all this time.

“I…didn’t know you were here too.”

Here.

Here, in…what was this place?

“…The last thing I remember…Hellshire Penitentiary was under siege…I tried to escape, tried to run…but as I was running through the basement, this…fog engulfed me, and everything went black. And then I woke up…here. But not just here. In all of these other places too,” the doctor said. “And…these people and creatures…they want to kill me.”

He didn’t sound scared.

Just…factual.

As though used to it.

(I understand that completely, Doctor.)

“…But I hadn’t run into you. Not until today. Caleb. Caleb, do you know where we are?”

Caleb shook his head.

He couldn’t believe Jensen was here.

(I have so much I want to ask him, I-I have so much I want to say, but-but the ground is shaking, it’s all ending soon-)

“…Caleb…”

The doctor had this look in his eye.

Great sorrow.

Great pity.

And worst, worst of all…

Understanding.

“I lost the game,” he whispered. “Do what you need to. We’ll talk later. We have time.”

(What was left of Caleb Quinn’s heart pinched at him, as though to remind him that no matter how viciously it was stabbed, no matter how many pieces it was torn into, it still beat firmly, stoutly onward, even in this hell.)

But he obeyed.

He had to, he was helpless, to disobey Jensen.

To disobey the entity, or its realm.

He put the man who had once kissed trails of fire across his chest and upper thighs onto a rusty hook, and his entire being screamed out with the man as he was torn apart and consumed by the entity.

It took a few more games.

But he did see him again.

And this time, he was ready.

He ignored the others.

They didn’t concern him.

They could work on those machines as long as they wanted.

He cornered Jensen on the corn field farm realm, a large place that he hated, a location that he often struggled with, due to its vastness and many hiding places.

Inside the house, on the top floor, working on one of the machines.

He cornered him.

And Jensen smiled, not an ounce of fear in his eyes.

He was so calm, so different than he’d been when he was alive.

“It’s good to see you again, Caleb,” Jensen said.

Caleb opened his mouth, although he wasn’t sure what he had to say, just that he needed to say it quickly.

But Jensen shocked him,

He raced forward and kissed him on the mouth.

(Stop, stop, what are you doing? Kill him, sacrifice, consume-)

(Shut the fuck up.)

He kissed back.

His fingers dug into the man’s shoulders, pushing him hard against the wall of the house.

He heard one of the machines popping in the distance as one of the other victims made a mistake, but he ignored it in favor of clutching at Jensen as though his life depended on it.

It was Jensen who broke free, who was panting, out of breath, exhausted, because Caleb didn’t feel tired, didn’t remember what it was like to feel overly exerted.

His face was red and his lips were shiny and red, and Caleb just wanted to kiss him again.

(Please, let me, I haven’t- I forgot, this is not human, this is not- I am human, I was human- this is not me anymore, I am not Caleb Quinn, and I don’t know why that doesn’t bother me, when it should-)

“You died,” Jensen said sadly.

His fingers traced the scar on his cheek.

Caleb gently grabbed his hand, kissed his palm.

But he took his hand back, and kept stroking his face, his own face referential, awed, and still mournful.

“You killed Bayshore. And the warden. They killed you. And…someone must’ve killed me. And…this is what was beyond death for the both of us. But…why?”

Caleb shook his head.

He didn’t want to talk about it.

They couldn’t do anything about it.

Less talking, more….

He pulled at Jensen’s shirt, but the man resisted.

“If this is a punishment…oh,” Jensen moaned for reasons that had nothing to do with Caleb’s fingers sliding up under his shirt, gliding over his chest. “There’s nothing to be done. But Caleb. Caleb, I…I have missed you. Oh, Caleb, this is awful, terrible, but at least you’re here with me, at least I’m not alone!”

Caleb agreed.

Not alone.

He pulled at his own shirt, wanting to feel their skin touching, craved something he had not craved in a long time.

The entity was very displeased.

It was prodding at his consciousness, digging into his heat with cruel, hot knives.

But he ignored it.

“Caleb,” Jensen panted, lurching up, into Caleb’s chest, as the man’s hand dipped into his underwear and wrapped around his member. “Caleb, I’m so sorry.”

But Caleb didn’t accept it.

Because he had nothing to be sorry for.

He bent down, over his former lover’s waist, and put his mouth over his cock, his first intimate contact with another human being in what felt like an eternity, and Jensen shouted, and far off, in the distance, two machines popped at once.

(Please, god, if you exist, if you are not, in fact, this entity, just give me a minute, just a minute, I need this-)

They opened the exits, and escaped.

All of them.

Including Jensen.

Because when Caleb was finished with him, once he was sated, their clothes lying on the stairs of the farm house, well, really, farm house façade, he let Jensen go.

He refused to hurt him, resisted his urges, his instincts, recognized them as artificial, a byproduct of the entity itself.

It was a trick he tried, numerous times after that.

Time and time again, if he encountered Jensen, he refused to hurt him.

Refused to stop him from escaping, from helping his friends escape.

(Because that was in his nature, of course, even here. Caleb could see the irony, how he had been “chosen” for his bloodlust, for his monstrous spirit, and Jensen had been chosen for his altruism, for his empathy, for his skills as a medic.)

And the entity tortured him for it.

Carved into his body with invisible hooks.

Pierced his mind with burning hot invisible pokers.

Split his brains open and drank his blood and feasted on his organs instead.

And he would’ve been content, would’ve allowed himself to be consumed entirely.

But Jensen.

Jensen, still kind, still compassionate, still incapable of allowing anyone, even a hunter and a killer and a murderer and an enemy combatant in this endless war, told him to stop.

_“Please. Do not hold back on me.”_

_“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill you. You were the only person who ever…who believed in me, who saved me, and I didn’t deserve it, I deserved to die, but now neither of us is dead, and now, I-I can’t-I will not.”_

_Jensen had smiled then._

_Brushed hair out of his eyes, affectionately nudging his forehead with his wrist._

_“We’re on opposite sides, dear,” he said affectionately. “And we always will be. We are not who we used to be. And we never will be again. We must adapt. We must…deal with this, whatever it is, for as long as it is happening. And I can’t stand the thought of you being punished because of a lingering attachment to our former lives.”_

_Caleb protested._

_Told him he wouldn’t do it._

_Clung to it._

_Because it was all he had, to remind him of who he was, and who they used to be._

_And perverse as it was, and again, deeply ironic, the only way he could remember Lorcan was to be reminded, through Jensen._

_The only two people who had ever made him feel alive._

_Two people whose memories, whose presences, kept him from becoming a completely mindless killing machine._

_“Hunt me,” Jensen whispered. “Kill me. Sacrifice me. I will hold on as long as I can. And you will, as long as you can too. And maybe, if there comes a time when the both of us can…escape, no matter how…then we will be free. Together.”_

_He peppered kisses on Caleb’s chin, trailing up to his cheeks, ending at his forehead._

_He rested his own forehead against Caleb’s for a few precious seconds._

_“If it makes things easier…forget me,” he whispered._

Many came and went.

The…survivors. The victims.

Some stayed.

They were strong, resilient, their souls capable of great stain, refusing to be swallowed totally by the entity.

Caleb almost respected their iron wills, their resilience, their…undying desire to escape, and to avoid punishment even though an eternity of failure with limited success couldn’t have been pleasant or motivating.

But he always had a soft spot for Jensen.

Always…looked the other way if he saw him sneaking about.

And, if his teammates were to all die, and the little gateway was opened…well.

The entity didn’t like it.

But he let him go.

Little things.

Kept him sane.

Gave him a little hope, cleared his mind, helped him remember where he was, and who he was.

And Jensen, forever trapped with him, in an endless game of cat and mouse, much more unfortunate than him, physically and mentally tortured for an eternity, kept fighting the good fight.

Until one day, he was simply gone.

Caleb waited, and waited, and kept expecting to see him, but he was nowhere to be found.

And then he knew.

He had lost him.

He had…been consumed.

Or…

His mind tried to torment him, mock him with the knowledge that his soul had been lost, callously swallowed by the entity, and he would never see him again.

But something still burned in him.

Even in eternal limbo, trapped as he was, he still found it in him to hope.

To believe.

(Your final testament to Jensen, your final thank you, his last remnant, his last impression on this universe.)

To know that he had finally escaped.

And maybe he would not escape today, or tomorrow.

Or even a thousand years from now.

But Caleb Quinn, not the Deathslinger, could live on as long as he needed to.

Because he would escape too.

(It was all he had. He had doomed himself. He had chosen Lorcan. He had chosen death, vengeance, pain, suffering, had died living his life that way. And didn’t regret that. But this life, this…shadow of a life. Not out of decency, but out of desperation, he could choose Jensen. He had the chance. He knew his salvation, only after finding his damnation. The irony. Oh, God was truly a poet.)

And it didn’t matter how many universes away Jensen was.

He would find him.

They would find one another.

The stars, his guiding lights, through his last life, this life, and the next, ever-present, ever glowing, would take him where he needed to be.

Death was not an escape.

But something more powerful than death itself could set him free.

That, he knew, with certainty.

So he would wait.

He would dream, the way Jensen had taught him.

And the next time he saw Jensen, he would love him the way Lorcan had taught him, passionately, irrationally, with force and focus, unashamed and loyal, in spite of all opposing forces.

But.

In the meantime.

The Deathslinger continued to stalk various realms, hunting for his prey.

His mind focused, his heart resting, but his soul still guarded, still as alive as it could be. 


End file.
